When Canadian Cattlemen’s Association director John Prentice went before the Senate agriculture committee in Edmonton April 1 to say cattle producers have grown to like the wheat board as it is, more than one observer made reference to April Fool’s jokes.
For CCA members, it was no laughing matter.
Their telephones started to ring.
“Yes, there was fallout,” CCA president Ben Thorlakson said May 1 in an interview. “We have had to respond to a lot of inquiries, not all of them calm, about when and why the CCA changed its position.”
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It hasn’t.
Thorlakson said the free enterprise cattle sector remains philosophically opposed to monopoly marketing.
“We always have embraced the concept of free and open markets for grain producers,” he said. “That has not changed.”
The CCA issued a joint statement with the Western Barley Growers’ Association last week opposing Canadian Wheat Board reform legislation because it does not break the monopoly and would give the board the power to cash-buy outside the pool when grain is needed to fill contracts.
“Limiting grain producers’ marketing choices and disrupting the cash markets will undermine confidence in barley production,” said the statement. “The CCA strongly supports grain producers having the choice to market their product in the most efficient way possible.”
How did that message get garbled before the Senate committee?
“I believe it started out to be the same but Mr. Prentice added some personal comments and observations,” said Thorlakson.
In fact, the main point of the Senate presentation was that the government decision to give grain farmers more control over the CWB through elections could be harmful to the cattle industry. If the farmer-controlled board decides to use cash buying to boost feed grain prices, it will raise livestock input prices.
He said the present wheat board has served the cattle industry by recognizing that the interests of both producers and feed users must be considered. The board makes sure there are feed reserves on the Prairies to serve cattle producers, said the CCA director.
Prentice asked senators to kill the proposal that the wheat board be allowed to cash-buy in the open market. The monopoly and the open market should be kept separate.
“We’ve grown comfortable with the Canadian Wheat Board as it’s currently structured,” he said.
Thorlakson said the CCA does oppose the proposal to allow the new farmer-controlled wheat board to dip into the open market to buy feed grain.
But it also continues to advocate the CWB lose its monopoly on wheat and barley exports across the Canada-United States border, he said.
