Prairie Organic Grain Prices - Introduction and Background

Introduction

The information contained in the tables contains farm level price and volume data for all major organic crops grown in the three Prairie Provinces. The data was collected by the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) as part of an initiative by the University of Saskatchewan, the Organic Agriculture Center of Canada (OACC), and Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Corporation, to improve the availabilty of organic price information on the prairies. Summary tables are available for Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Manitoba, as well as the three provinces in aggregate. A description of the methodology used by the SRC is also available.

Note: Information is aggregated to ensure that the confidentiality of individual farmers is not compromised.

Background

In the mid to late 1990’s, the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) created an entity called the Organic Product Information Service (OPIS) to conduct surveys on a bi-monthly basis for the purpose of obtaining price information and to determine the availability of organic crops. Data was collected from all three Prairie Provinces, with the majority being collected from Saskatchewan (~ 70%). The mandate of OPIS was to establish linkages between producers and buyers of organic commodities. Survey information was tabulated, summarized, and made available to all entities holding OPIS membership. OPIS has since ceased to exist, as buyers have developed their own producer lists and price databases (SRC, 2002).

For the past several years the SRC has been commissioned to conduct a survey of Saskatchewan organic farmers on behalf of SCIC with the objective of obtaining price and volume information that can be used as a benchmark for determining the value of insured organic crops. As an incentive to enhance participation in the survey, SRC has distributed a summary of survey results to all participating farmers. For confidentiality reasons this information has not been made available to the public, and has been used exclusively by SCIC.

As the organic industry in Canada continues to expand, there is an increasing need to establish an annual dataset of farm level price information. Not only can this data be used by SCIC to update their current price information but producers across the prairies can also use it as a benchmark for determining if they are receiving market value for their crops. In addition, price information is a valuable tool for assessing the overall performance and structure of markets and for making predictions about market performance in the future.