PIKE LAKE, Sask. – When Mark Watne spoke at the National Farmers Union’s annual meeting last week, he didn’t say the kinds of things Canadians usually expect from American farmers.
“We would kill for a marketing board like the Canadian Wheat Board,” the North Dakota Farmers Union member said. “You will never hear the NDFU say anything bad about the board. We may not like all of its marketing practices, but it does an outstanding job for the farmer and that is what counts.
“It would be an awful shame if you lost the board or it was weakened through these new proposals,” said Watne about the Western Grain Marketing Panel’s report.
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Watne and his organization favor a North America-wide wheat board and grain pooling system.
The NDFU and other groups have pressed Washington to pass enabling legislation to create a wheat pooling system but say the chances are slim.
Watne also had some harsh words for his own government.
“EEP (Export Enhancement Program grain subsidies) has never done our farmers any good,” he said. “It served to depress world prices and put money in the grain companies’ pockets, not ours.”
Watne told the NFU delegates there are myths on both sides of the border regarding the grain trade, and legislators from both countries take advantage of farmers’ insecurities.
He said the new U.S. farm bill is “Washington’s first step away from providing any subsidies at all” to farmers.
“The new farm bill is designed to help balance the federal budget, not help producers,” he said.
However, the wheat board and some Canadian farm groups have complained that in its first year at least, the U.S. farm bill, which gradually reduces subsidies over seven years, makes U.S. farmers the most heavily subsidized in the world.
