Next time your trucker pulls out of your laneway with a bin of
corn, you may have to pay the fine if the truck is overloaded.
Tough changes in provincial trucking laws will make the cargo
owner as guilty as the truck driver if the truck is
overweight, even when the farmer doesn't have a set of scales
to test the load.It's part of an Ontario crackdown on trucking that's aimed at making the province's roads longer lasting, as well as safer to drive on. The changes will also make it more expensive to ship farm crops.
On the horizon are a ban on belly-mounted lift axles, and a 10-per-cent cut in maximum axle-loadings. The province is also looking at tougher safety checks.
Provincial transport Minister Al Palladini is promising heftier fines to make sure that each ticket stings so much that shippers and drivers won't venture out on the roads again until they can pass every test.
Brian Doidge, economist with the Ontario Corn Producers Association has doubts about Bill 179, allowing the province to charge cargo owners when trucks are overweight starting July 1.
"This is a bill that was designed for the gravel and aggregate industry," Doidge says. "It may make sense for them, but it's going to be tough to handle on the farm.
"How is the farmer supposed to know if the truck is overweight?"
Few farmers have scales. What's more, Ontario's load limits are a maze of numbers and statistics, with allowable weights based on complex calculations involving axle types and spacings, as well as tire sizes and trailer dimensions. In many cases it will be unrealistic for farmers to know how much grain a truck is permitted to haul.
As well, overloadings can happen when a lift axle is set improperly. But that's the trucker's job, not the farmer's. Ontario's corn, soybean and wheat boards are meeting to plot strategy to deal with the new trucking environment.
Warren Reynolds, with the transport ministry's Vehicle Weights Review Office in St. Catharines, says the ministry isn't going to target farmers. Instead, when inspectors catch an overweight truck, they'll try to figure out who's at fault. If inspectors find a lot of overloaded grain trucks, they'll start laying charges, and tell the industry to clean up its act.
Reynolds says the province must get tough on overweight trucks. Trucks that are 10 per cent overloaded cause 33 per cent extra fatigue damage to bridges, and reduce bridge life by 25 per cent, he points out.
Ontario already faces $1 billion worth of work to make the province's bridges safe for current, legal load limits.
Heavy trucks are bridge killers. Bridges are designed for a 50-year life expectancy, based on failure risk of one in 5,000. At that rate, Ontario should have one bridge collapse every 10 years.
Yet at current rates, four bridges fail every year, largely because of overloading, Reynolds says. And it could get worse. Bridges over the busy Queen Elizabeth Way from Niagara Falls to Toronto were built to 1944 standards, with truck weights far below today's limits.
And those limits are routinely exceeded. Reynolds says a survey of the gravel industry shows 88 per cent of its trucks are overweight.
"Agriculture is no different than anybody else carrying dry bulk," Reynolds says. Farmers may not have on-site scales, he says, but grain truckers could develop their own system of marking their boxes so truckers and farmers could see how much payload is safe.
"I want to emphasize that we're going to try to work with industry," Reynolds says. "Still, we don't have enough money to design a marking system for them. Agriculture will have to do that on its own."
Farm truckers will also see a crackdown on safety inspections. David Beneteau, inspector with the transport ministry at Windsor, says that of the 2,338 trucks pulled over for random inspections across the province in 1994, 1,006 were ordered out of service because of serious safety infractions.
Of 800 farm-plated trucks, 622 had at least one safety problem, and 240 were taken off the road.
Beneteau says it's harder for farmers to keep their trucks up to code, in part because unlike full-time commercial truckers, farmers aren't in the routine of checking their trucks every day and keeping up to date on rule changes.
Nevertheless, he says, "You're going to have to make the extra effort learning what to look for. The public is insisting that we get tough on unsafe trucks."
The transport ministry is also hiring consultants to do two studies this summer looking at truck design. The first will look at the amount of damage trucks are doing to Ontario roads. The second will look at how much it would cost truckers and shippers to switch to trucks that don't do as much damage. Rod Taylor, analyst with the ministry's Freight Policy Office, says it could spell the end of the tri-axle trailers used to move much of Ontario's grain harvest.
Tri-axle configurations with belly-mounted lift axles are illegal on the Prairies and in most American states except Michigan, Taylor says.
The trucks are hard on roads because the belly axle often takes more than its share of the load, he says.
In Western Canada, the grain industry is using a tridem configuration, with three axles operating as a single unit at the rear of the grain trailer.
Switching to tridems would likely cut a truck's capacity by 10 per cent, Taylor says. If that's unsatisfactory, the trucker may have to move up to a quad-axle system.
While the consultants' studies aren't complete, tri-axles are unlikely to survive. The province is already looking at how much phase-in time it will have to allow if and when it launches a tri-axle ban.
Making the switch may be costly to truckers and shippers, but keeping tri-axles is too expensive for tax payers, Taylor says. "Tri-axles do a lot of damage to our roads and bridges even when they're used properly."
Frank Van Hoeve, researcher for the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, says farmers are shipping more of their crops by truck, either from on-farm bins or straight off the combine.
"These changes are coming at a time when a lot more farmers are operating their own 18-wheelers," Van Hoeve says. "I think most farmers are ready to go along with changes, as long as the province is reasonable."
Spring sign of warming?
After such a cold winter and spring, Ontario farmers are joking about the greenhouse effect. Too soon, however, they may be crying.
Earth is getting hotter, says the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a branch of the United Nations. It says 1995 was 0.4 degrees hotter than normal, making it the hottest year since world-wide temperature recording started in 1861. It doesn't sound like much-0.4 degrees C is less than one degree Fahrenheit, too small to be noticed by even the thinnest skins.
But last year's global 0.4 degree rise killed over 1,000 people in eastern North America, with nearly 400 dying in Chicago after a week-long 40-degree-C steambath. Last year was also the stormiest year on record, with 11 Atlantic hurricanes, including Opal that smashed into Florida's Gulf Coast and dumped three inches of rain over much of Ontario.
WMO says 1995 is the year the Earth recovered from the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines, which sent millions of tonnes of dust into the upper atmosphere. But WMO warns that global warming doesn't mean a slow, steady rise in temperatures. Instead, its scientists say, the climate will get more unstable.
While Canada's winter has been 0.3 degrees C cooler than normal, the Canadian Atmospheric Environment Service (AES) points out it seemed colder because it came on the heels of six consecutive seasons all with above-average temperatures. Gordon McBean, head of AES, told a recent WMO meeting that humanity must brace for even more.
"Changes in climate over the next century will be disruptive to global ecosystems and dangerous to humanity," McBean said. "We have started an uncontrolled experiment with the life support system of this planet."
By studying air pockets in glaciers, scientists have learned that the Earth's level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has stayed constant at 280 parts per million for the last 220,000 years.
Since 1850 and the start of the industrial era, it's been climbing steadily, and currently stands at 370 parts per million. Carbon dioxide in the air makes the globe warmer by trapping heat that would otherwise be released back to outer space.
At the same time, the world is polluting the atmosphere with more chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and methane, so that by the 2050, the greenhouse effect will be twice its 1850 level. McBean predicted temperatures would rise 0.2 to 0.5 degrees C per decade. Temperature impacts will be greater the further away from the Equator.
There will also be critical swings in rainfall patterns. Canada's farm belt will get more snow and rain in winter, and less rain in summer, he predicted.
Severe storms will also move further north, he said. -TB
First beets in three decades
By TOM BUTTON
Sugar beets are back in the ground in Kent county after a
29-year absence.Planting started May 8, with Wallaceburg cash cropper Reid Leeson seeding a 50 acre field between showers. "It's a gamble," the 61-year-old Leeson said. "But I'm not doing it for me...sugar beets helped me buy my farms, and I'd like to see them come back to give the same kind of help to young farmers today.
"If we could get a 10,000-acre industry going again, it would pump an extra $10 million into the farm economy."
Leeson grew sugar beets from 1958 to 1967, when Tate and Lyle padlocked the doors of its Chatham plant, Ontario's last beet refinery, killing a crop that had reached 33,000 acres.
At harvest this October, Leeson will truck his beets to the Michigan Sugar Company (MSC) refinery at Croswell, 24 miles north of Sarnia's Bluewater Bridge.
MSC agronomist Keith Kalso says six Kent county farmers are growing a total 300 acres of sugar beets in 1996. "We didn't have any trouble getting growers," Kalso says.
The company had predicted farmers would plant 500 to 1,000 acres. High corn and soybean prices ate into cropping plans, however. Kalso says the company's U.S. crop will be 120,000 acres, down about 10 per cent from last year, also because of commodity prices.
Leeson figures he'll still end up with cash in his pocket. He's expecting a minimum $1,000 gross per acre, but hopes to nudge that up to $1,300 per acre with a 25-ton yield. "If we do, we'll be looking at a net around $700 per acre."
Kalso says MSC is hoping to expand into Ontario to obtain enough raw beets to meet market demand and keep its Michigan and Ohio plants running at capacity. The two states are growing beets on almost all suitable acres, he says.
Ed Tomecek, Ridgetown-based crops adviser for the provincial agriculture ministry, says Ontario is ideal for sugar beets, which can be grown in regions with as little as 2500 heat units.
At first, he sees the beet crop expanding in Kent and Lambton, in part because trucking costs can quickly eat up profits, and also because many farmers like Leeson either grew the crop themselves, or have fathers or neighbours with experience. "Beets are also a really good option for the heavier soils in the area," Tomecek says.
Local equipment dealers are offering to lease specialized beet harvesting equipment, Tomecek adds. Last-minute approvals came from Queen's Park to give Ontario beet growers access to effective herbicides.
And it looks as if the industry should be able to deflate the controversy over the cross-border movement of soil. No matter how carefully they're harvested, sugar beets come out of the field dirty. Kalso estimates the dirt, called tare, at 500 pounds an acre from dry fields, up to 1,000 pounds in a muddy fall.
Michigan had refused to let the dirty beets across the border, since it's anxious to prevent soybean cyst nematodes from hitching a ride to the state's cash crop belt.
The Canadian government has also refused to let the soil come back into Ontario after it crosses the border, unless the U.S. government will give it a phytosanitary certificate stating it's pest-free, something the U.S. agriculture department has been refusing to do.
Kalso says a compromise has been reached. The sugar company will collect the tare soil from all Ontario shipments into a few semi-trailer loads, that could then be tested for pests and approved for shipping back to Canada.
Leeson just wants to make sure the fledgling Ontario sugar beet industry doesn't get strangled with red tape. "I started growing sugar beets when I was 23. Sugar beets could be a big help to all those 23-year-olds out there now who are trying to get their farms off the ground."
Better hay sales a sure bet
The Ontario horse racing industry is betting that a cut in the provincial tax on wagering will get the industry back on track.
In his budget earlier this month, Finance Minister Ernie Eves announced that the current five per cent tax on wagering - 7.4 per-cent minus a 2.4 per cent rebate to horsemen for purses and equine research - will be cut to 0.5 per cent.
The horse industry, with some help from the farm lobby, has campaigned for several years for a tax cut. When the provincial New Democrats brought in casino gambling, instant lotteries and sports betting, horse racing lost its monopoly on the betting public and a large chunk of its market, but continued to pay one of the top racing tax rates in North America.
The industry claimed the government was unfairly competing with horse racing, taxing its new gambling options at a lower rate than horse racing. The Ontario Federation of Agriculture was enlisted to help with the lobby effort after an industry study showed that the province's horse racing and breeding interests annually requires about $350 million in feed hay, straw and local services.
"Everybody benefits", from the smaller tracks to the Ontario Jockey Club, which owns the bigger racing outfits in the province, says Jane Holmes, executive director of the Ontario Horse Racing Industry Association (OHRIA), a group representing the province's horse racing and breeding industry.
The Conservative government will also allow racetracks to collect revenue from video lottery terminals (VLTs), which will be introduced at charity casinos and racetracks.
"The industry is extremely pleased this government provided horse racing with the opportunity to compete fairly with other forms of gaming in the province," says Robert Hall, OHRIA chairman. "Although we hadn't originally foreseen VLTs in our business plan, we're optimistic that this new revenue source, combined with the announced tax adjustment, will allow us to revitalize the industry and enhance horse breeding and rearing in the province."
More breeding means more horses to feed and that's good news for farmers, says Jerseyville hay producer Fritz Trauttmansdorff. He producers 2,000 tonnes of small square bales annually for the horse breeding, pleasure riding and Florida racing industry. If horse owners get a break, markets for farmers will improve, Trauttmansdorff says.
Horse wagering studies show that every one per cent of tax charged by the government represents about $10 million. A 4.5-per-cent tax break would amount to a $47 million annual gross increase for tracks based on the $1.4 billion wagered by Ontario bettors last year. Under the new system, the industry will be responsible for the purse and research rebate, which costs about $24 million.
Holmes says a business plan detailing how Ontario racetracks will distribute the savings is being put together for government approval. She says improving facilities, offering breeder incentives and increasing payouts to bettors will figure prominently in the plan. Industry studies show when bettors get a greater return, they tend to push more money through the betting windows.
Some of the savings will likely be turned over to operate the Ontario Racing Commission, the sports governing body, which currently receives provincial funding.
The tax break brings Ontario in line with other racing jurisdictions. The state of Michigan recently lowered the tax rate on live racing to zero; Quebec rebates all taxes except for 0.5 per cent. In New Jersey, the state from which the Conservatives' Common Sense Revolution is modeled, the tax rate is 0.5. -BT