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While the ships sit empty, grain elevators in Western provinces are now at 90 per cent capacity, said Hemmes, adding that farmers are paid when they deliver their harvest to the elevators.

Photo by Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press

“If the grain elevators run out of room and they can’t deliver it, the farmers can’t get paid,” Hemmes said. “That’s what’s so frustrating about this. There has to be a balance between empty and loaded cars moving through the country and that is not happening now.”

Like grain farmers, Canadian pork producers rely on rail containers to move meat out of storage facilities and on to ports in Vancouver and Halifax. Pork processors fill roughly 1,000 refrigerated containers each week as trains return a steady flow of empty ones to be filled again. Now, with only trucks available to move the containers, processors are running out of storage to house the backlog, said Gary Stordy, director of government and corporate affairs for the Canadian Pork Council.

“The trucking companies are overwhelmed too, and it’s slowing everything,” Stordy said, adding that moving pork by truck is roughly three times as expensive as by rail. “Everybody’s getting really concerned. This is getting more and more difficult.”

Everybody’s getting really concerned. This is getting more and more difficult Gary Stordy, Canadian Pork Council

In addition to impeding deliveries, blockades are slowing the movement of critical inputs to agricultural supply chains. In Quebec, home to the largest proportion of Canadian pork producers, farmers depend on railways to deliver feed for animals and propane to heat barns. Indeed, the system delivers 1.1 million litres of propane each week for the latter purpose — 85 per cent of which arrives by rail.