Local farmers dependent on rail transit concerned about potential work stoppage

Rail transit is essential to the local farming industry, making a potential work stoppage by Canada's two largest railways concerning.

Late Thursday afternoon, the federal government ordered Canadian National Railway Co. (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. (CPKC) to end the first-ever simultaneous work stoppage that disrupted supply chains.

Steve Kell operates Kell Farms Limited, a grain and hog farm in Innisfil which relies on imports and exports by rail.

"For instance, soybean that gets used in hog feed, the protein source will be used up within a few days," said Kell. His farm imports around 40 to 50 tons of soy per week, and mills across the province use his wheat to produce flour.

• Download the CTV News app to get local alerts on your device
• Get the latest local updates sent to your email inbox

Kell said both those processes heavily depend on adequate supply through rail transit.

"It's like if you were going to bake cookies and you had everything except sugar, you can't make cookies right," added Kell. "If a processor has most of the ingredients they need, but they're missing one of them, the whole process has to stop."

Other local farms said they depend on rail to transport crucial energy sources like propane.

"[Farmers] depend on propane to heat their chicken barns," said Paul Maurice, a broiler and cash crop farmer in Lafontaine. He added that livestock shipping is also effectively done by train.

Without rail, Paul Markle from Barrie's Chamber of Commerce said alternate options for mass transport to the region could be overburdened.

"If they're not going by rail, they're going by transport trucking," said Markle. "That means more emissions, more burning of fossil fuels, more clogged arteries that are already clogged."

Similarly, Kell estimates that a 100-car train can transport 9,000 tons of cargo. "You would need 180 or 200 trucks in order to make up for one train that didn't appear," he said.

Many automotive manufacturers were also bracing for slowdowns.

In a statement to CTV News, a spokesperson with Honda in Alliston said in part, "[We] do not anticipate any immediate impact to our sales operations in the short term. We are monitoring the situation closely and will adjust our operations as necessary."