There is a market for downgraded crops

There may be some hope for farmers despite a very difficult 2019 harvest season.

Many crops have been downgraded because of poor weather conditions during the growing season and harvest.

The North West Terminal in Unity owns and operates an inland grain terminal and bio-products production facility.

Chief executive officer Jason Skinner told the Brent Loucks Show that the terminal is happy to take in grain that has been downgraded due to the poor weather and from sitting too long in the fields.

“We have domestic and offshore markets for those crops. As well, we use that type of grain on-site in our bio-product plant,” said Skinner.

Skinner said the North West Terminal established an ethanol plant in 2009. He said it was to add some value to the grain that local farmers were producing and the plant generally consumes feed type grains to manufacture both alcohol and protein supplements that goes to the livestock industry.

“We use about 2.3 million bushels of grain in that plant a year, so we definitely are in the market for any kind of grain — wheat, durum, barley, if it has been downgraded due to sprouting, weathering frost, even fusarium,” he said.

Skinner said the terminal moves the product into a number of markets and the biofuels stay mostly in Saskatchewan.

“We also produce higher-quality types of alcohol that goes into industrial markets (and) pharmaceutical markets. We produce a lot of different qualities of alcohol,” said Skinner.