Each spring this yard on the southwest corner of Tisdale by Heritage Rd comes to life as a crew sets to work putting together the bins that will be sold by Beeland Co-op this year.

For many years the number of bins have been fairly constant in that twenty to thirty range but in the last three years that number has almost tripled. Last year's stock of bins and it was a very large number disappeared long before harvest was completed as had the previous year's bins. High grain prices and a volatile market increase the profitability of store grain on the farm rather than taking it immediately to market. The increased popularity of those huge plastic field storage bags should have reduced the demand for steel bins but that does not seem to be the case.

Another factor that increases the number of bins being purchases is the continuous growth in the size of the agricultural units. Farms are simply getting larger and larger each year even though Saskatchewan farm sizes are still smaller than the highly subsidized operations in North Dakota.

Economists with several of Canada's major banks are predicting that the Canadian dollar is going to reach par with the US dollar by summer and climb above that in the early fall before declining to its present level by the end of the calendar year. One of the factors that are pointing to is that commodity prices are expected to climb as demand for Canadian produce, be that mineral or agricultural will increase world wide. With the increase in the dollar's value that means that Saskatchewan farmer could enjoy a positive result with this year's crop.

But a lot of factors remain in play. Remarkably all of the input costs are multiplying at a remarkable rate and absolutely everything depends on the crop getting in the ground in a timely fashion, good growing conditions and enough time to get the crop harvested. Just writing that list makes one realise how many things can go wrong and makes one realise that buying a lottery ticket by comparison is a good investment.