Grain bins at Coldie Nagy’s farm near Ogema, Sask., on October 23, 2025.Heywood Yu/The Globe and Mail
Saskatchewan grain farmers are demanding Ottawa force exporters to publish sales data that would fill an information gap that agricultural groups say is costing producers millions of dollars a year in lost income.
The release of such data, they say, is necessary to level the playing field between Canadian farmers and grain handlers such as major global players like Cargill and Bunge. It is a common practice in other countries where farmers have long benefited from this kind of information.
The demands are coming after a difficult year for Saskatchewan grain farmers. In particular, Beijing’s tariffs on the province’s biggest crop – canola – cost farmers access to a $5-billion market and pushed down prices by $1 to $2 a bushel overnight.
These farmers may have benefited from sales data that could help them better judge when to sell their crops and how much to sell them for, said Tracy Broughton, executive director of Saskatchewan’s oil seed industry association.
“At the end of the day, farmers want an open, competitive market. And for an open competitive market to work you need transparency of information and data.”
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The export sales rules proposed by Saskatchewan farm groups including SaskOilseeds would require grain handlers to publicize all large sales to overseas markets on a daily basis.
The farm groups are also pushing for weekly reports on the amount and destination of major Canadian agricultural goods, and regular publication of vessel loading data at major ports, including Vancouver and Prince Rupert.
Vessel-loading data used to be publicly available under the Canadian Wheat Board. It was discontinued when Prime Minister Stephen Harper disbanded the federally mandated marketing agency in 2012.
The three measures would put Canadian farmers on a level playing field with counterparts in the United States.
Since 1973, the United States Department of Agriculture has reported sales of 40 commodities such as corn, soybeans and wheat on a weekly basis. The database came about after what became known as “The Great Russian Grain Robbery” of 1972, when the Soviet Union quietly bought 10 million tonnes of grain from numerous private U.S. exporters, depleting government stocks and causing a run-up in food prices.
Today, publication of the data means that U.S. farmers have more insight demand for their crops, said Marlene Boersch, co-founder of an agricultural intelligence consulting firm and author of an October, 2025, report on export sales data. The report was funded by Saskatchewan farm groups.
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This means they can make more informed decisions about when they should sell to the grain companies that collect, distribute and export to buyers in overseas markets.
The study found Canadian farmers operate at a “significant information disadvantage” compared with their U.S. and EU counterparts because they do not have access to information on export sales. It estimated that closing this information gap could lead to gains of up to $22.7-million annually.
“We live in a data-driven world,” Ms. Boersch said. “We need data to make rational and well-founded decisions.”
The Canadian Grain Commission publishes weekly data on the movement of grain from farmers to elevators, ports and export markets.
However, this data is backward-looking, said Dale Leftwich, policy manager at SaskOilseeds. Once the grain is loaded onto a ship and seabound, “it’s ancient history,” he said. It does not help farmers weigh whether or not to accept the current price being offered by an elevator, or whether to hold for higher prices.
“Currently farmers are operating in a blind situation. They are making deals with grain companies that have access to all of this information in a timely fashion. It’s an uneven playing field.”
More sales transparency would be especially helpful in a global marketplace increasingly subject to trade disruptions, he said.
After Beijing placed tariffs on canola products in 2025 (which were dropped in January of this year), prices elevators offered farmers fell by $100 a tonne and what is known as the basis doubled, said Roger Chevraux, an Alberta canola farmer.
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The basis is the cut taken by the grain handler to cover the costs of handling and the risks associated with purchasing the product. Those risks include not being able to find a buyer.
Farmers were caught between selling product at low prices, or holding on to inventory in the hope that demand from somewhere else would drive prices higher, Mr. Chevraux said.
Greater transparency is always beneficial to those trying to forecast prices, said Chuck Penner, an agricultural analyst and founder of LeftField Commodity Research.
But while releasing export sales data is an excellent idea in theory, Mr. Penner questions whether the data would be used by farmers in practice. While U.S. farmers have access to this information, not all of them use it to make more informed decisions.
Mr. Penner’s research examining prices paid by U.S. and Canadian farmers shows no consistent disadvantage for farmers north of the border.
The export sales would need to not only be published, but also presented and interpreted in a way that is useful to farmers, he said.
The United States Department of Agriculture is in the process of reviewing and modernizing its export sales database. This comes after a federal shutdown in the fall suspended the release of data for U.S. farmers in the midst a trade dispute with China over soybeans.
But it is also happening as the global marketplace shifts, SaskOilseed‘s Mr. Leftwich said. Commodity sales are no longer just about supply and demand. State intervention now moves markets. Transparency is needed today as much as it was needed during the Cold War, he said.
“Unless we understand the political implications and what is happening and how that’s affecting the market, then we can’t react to it, we can’t make intelligent decisions.”