Saskatchewan farmers are the real victims of the Global Transportation Hub land deal

Shipping agri-food products out of an intermodal facility in containers offered our province a final, decisive chance to access a massive, increasingly diverse overseas market for food. The scandal jeopardizes the entire GTH project. The government said as much.  "No matter what happens to it, [the GTH] will be under such intense public scrutiny it would be difficult for a private business or private tenant to want to become a partner to move into that. So we need to look for something else," Justice Minister Don Morgan said.  Containerization allows farmers to do something for which they have yearned for 90 years: to find their own markets, work directly with small- and medium-sized overseas importers and set their own prices. Saskatchewan is an agricultural export province and we are fiercely proud of it. Let's use some easy-to-find numbers. In 2016, we exported $14.4 billion of agri-food products, up 32.1 per cent over the 10-year average, government promotional literature tells us. Sounds like an occasion for another round of high-fives. A successful intermodal hub would give farmers 40 cash crops, not two or three. A cluster of processors at the GTH expelling, extruding, compacting, pelletizing, isolating, filtering, sorting and testing raw agricultural commodities would create high-value products and by-by-products, some of which don't currently exist. Co-located co-packers, shippers and logistics companies would bottle, label, box, palletize and containerize. Ordering, stuffing and shipping a container would take a farmer days, not weeks, which is the current dismal state of affairs. But such a scenario depends on one thing: firm commitment to containerization and intermodal traffic from our government. Let's be realistic, Saskatchewan: This is our last chance, and we are screwing it up.