Missed delivery deadlines
One of the major frustrations for producers at this time of year is crop movement. In many cases, grain that was supposed to be off the farm by the end of July is still taking up bin space. This can apply to CWB grains as well as whole host of other crops. Even when there are contracts to take grain by a certain date, those deadlines are often missed. At their end, buyers can face all sorts of logistical and sales problems, but all too often they seem to over-promise what can be accomplished. Last minute grain movement ends up being another job added to the list of pre-harvest tasks. The crunch comes when harvest is starting before all the promised grain movement has occurred. Having enough bin space isn’t usually a problem early in the harvest season, but undelivered grain might be sitting in specific bins that are earmarked for new crop production. Beyond that, there’s the question of manpower. No one wants to shut down a combine to go clean out bin bottoms. As a result, grain is sometimes consolidated from flat bottom bins into hopper bottom bins at this time of year so that loading trucks will be less labour intensive. It seems that you never have too much bin space and you never have too many hopper bottom bins. I’m Kevin Hursh.