President Todd Lewis says they covered a lot of ground and brought in some key speakers for their AGM.

He says Murad Al’Katib  gave an update on the Arctic Gateway at Churchill.

"There're opportunities there, it’s a real Saskatchewan success story for Eastern Saskatchewan especially. It’s going to be an outlet for some grain and maybe even bring products in from the other direction. So I think that’s very welcome news."

Lewis was also re-elected as President of the farm group and notes APAS members had a great discussion and dealt with about 40 resolutions.

“We had carbon tax, lots of talk around grain drying and the extra charges because of the carbon tax on natural gas and propane which for producers is certainly taking away from their bottom line. Rail transportation again, lots of concern over the delays caused by the C-N strike and wanting more transparency around our grains moving and you know concerns about the demurrage at the West Coast. Also, had some good conversation around the Internet, improving the internet is always something that we talk about every year and hopefully, we're going to see more improvements.” 

He says one of the interesting resolutions was about glyphos use and talking about maybe MRL’s and testing for them more at the elevator instead of at the port.

“If producers are going to have troubles with MRL’s we’d just as soon find out early in the process instead of later.”

He says the Chief Commissioner for the Canadian Grain Commission, Patty Miller was there so there was some discussion around that and the modernization of the Canadian Grain Act.

There was lots of concern around crop insurance and marketing of this year's crop and the fact that there’s still a lot of crops left out there.

“In a lot of cases the crop insurance won't be paying because producers have enough to satisfy their crop insurance. Those are losses that they are going to have to take and certainly lots of concern around the spring of 2020, you know, timing wise and everything else to get the land in shape, so we can get that little bit of crop off or salvage what we can. So lots of concern around that, you know. I think looking at the future that's some of the biggest concerns and certainly around trade, lots of concerns there. Our canola markets you know are $1 off per bushel easily with, you know, the trade situation we're facing now. We're hoping you know to get that fixed, the sooner the better.”