Farmers are already finding it a challenge to get hay, and when they can find someone willing to sell, they are paying about 20 to 40 per cent more than usual.
Rising grain prices due to Prairie droughts, followed by a heat dome and then devastating floods in B.C. that wiped out both stored crops and those in the field, have pushed up the cost of feeding animals, which will in turn mean higher consumer prices for meat and dairy.
And as war in Ukraine disrupts important supply chains for fertilizer, farmers are facing yet another challenge getting a commodity used to boost output.
“It’s a bit of a double whammy for farmers in British Columbia,” said Sylvain Charlebois, a director at Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab, who has been analyzing increasing meat and dairy costs. “There’s a lot of uncertainty and instability. You could potentially see another upward cycle in prices as a result of the conflict in Ukraine because it’s going to cost more to feed livestock.”
He said an expected vote on March 16 by Canadian Pacific Railway employees on whether to strike will also be important to watch as it could impact the cost of delivering fertilizers and grains.
At Surrey-based Vanderveen Hay Sales, Jason Vanderveen, who helps to run his family’s long-standing business, said these trends will likely impact prices next year.
Farmers are already finding it a challenge to get hay, and when they can find someone willing to sell, they are paying about 20 to 40 per cent more than usual.
New hay is usually harvested in late May or early June. There is normally plenty of already-made hay in the market to last until then, but this year, Vanderveen is “pretty confident” they will run out before that.
“It’s not normal,” he said.
Farmer Julia Smith, who has a ranch near Merritt where she raises pigs and cows, had socked away hay to last the whole winter, but it all got lost in the mid-November floods.
Her regular shipment of animal feed that was supposed to be delivered a day after the flooding started only arrived a few weeks ago.
She has been “scrounging (hay) from other sources,” but buying in much smaller quantities has meant she has been paying prices that have been as high as 60 per cent more than she expected.
“I usually buy six or eight tons at a time, so if I had to go to the feed store and buy it in 30-pound bags, that’s just not economical at all,” said Smith, who is also president of the Small-Scale Meat Producers Association.
She said that with spring approaching, her cows will at least be able to go out to feed on grass, but “if I don’t have grain to feed my pigs, I can’t put them out on grass.”
“Some people can’t find hay, and are thinking, ‘Can I feed $500-a-ton hay until turnout in May (when there is new hay available), and if so, what’s that going to do to my bottom line?
She said the cost of hay in the past had been about $210 a ton.
She increased her selling prices, but even with a bump of 50 per cent from last year, it has been hard to keep up with escalating costs.
“I have the highest prices out there, but I checked again, and it’s not going to cut it,” said Smith.
The cost of grains has increased roughly 30 per cent due to a tough year of drought in the Prairies, said Casey Pruim, an Abbotsford area dairy farmer who is a director of the B.C. Dairy Association.
Dairy cows can also eat plant material that is largely grown on farms, but the heat dome dried up a lot of this supply, and many farmers lost winter crops such as corn as fields were covered with water that froze, he said.
“Even with irrigation, it was really difficult to keep up” with getting enough water to plants in the summer, said Pruim. And then, “It was a really wet winter.”
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Source: vancouversun.com
