WINNIPEG – The battle over barley marketing has finished but another skirmish over grain marketing rules is looming, this time involving wheat.
The Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, which represents some 6,500 prairie farmers, is planning a campaign to convince the federal government to allow farmers to sell wheat directly to U.S. buyers.
At their annual convention last week, wheat grower delegates passed two resolutions aimed at ending the Canadian Wheat Board’s monopoly over wheat exports.
One asks Ottawa to allow farmers and private companies to sell wheat directly to buyers in the U.S. and Mexico, a concept known as a continental market. The other goes one step farther, asking for a dual market in which the board would lose its wheat export monopoly in all markets.
Read Also
Powdery mildew can be combine fire risk
Dust from powdery mildew can cause fires in combines.
“This is going to be a high priority issue,” for the association, president Hubert Esquirol said in an interview.
The resolutions reflect the wheat growers’ long-held philosophy that farmers should have more freedom to choose how to sell their products and not be locked into a pooling system.
Farmers unhappy
But they also reflect two specific developments in this year’s wheat markets. Farmers in Manitoba are unhappy with the board for refusing to sell their fusarium-infected wheat to the U.S., even though some private companies found markets. And some farmers in the southern Prairies are upset that they can’t sell high-quality wheat directly to U.S. buyers for premium prices.
“Farmers are disgruntled,” said Jean Van Roessel, an association director who farms at Bow Island, Alta. “They would like to be able to sell it themselves. It should be as simple as driving a truck across the border and picking up a cheque.”
She said the continental barley market experience convinced many farmers that the private trade can do as good or a better job than the wheat board selling to the U.S. The wheat growers’ proposals would still allow farmers to sell to the board if they wished.
“We don’t want to take away a choice,” she said. “We just want to add a choice.”
Pricing is a problem
Wheat board commissioner Ken Beswick acknowledged that the cross-border price differential is an “immense” problem for the board and is upsetting many farmers.
Farmers have the right to decide what kind of marketing system they want, he said, but they should be careful that any long-term changes they ask for aren’t based on short-term market conditions.
As for the wheat growers’ request for a continental or dual wheat market, Beswick said in an interview the board “would have a tough time accepting that for the same reasons as for barley.”
The actual elevator price in the U.S. isn’t always as high as the published market price, he told the wheat growers. Also, flooding the U.S. market would depress prices there and in other markets.
Wheat growers director Bill Cooper of West Bend, Sask., said farmer support for the wheat board marketing system is at a “low ebb” even in his home province and the trend will continue if farmers don’t get more flexibility.
Asked if the wheat growers believe the majority of prairie farmers can be convinced to support a continental wheat market, Esquirol said: “If the dissatisfaction grows in the next year at the same rate it has in the last year, the answer is yes.”
