DALLAS, Texas (Staff) – There is no legislative authority for the U.S. to limit Canadian wheat imports to sales by individual farmers, says a Canadian Wheat Board commissioner.
The U.S. National Association of Wheat Growers passed a resolution to that effect at its annual convention last week. Sponsors said the proposal is specifically designed to block purchases from the wheat board.
But wheat board commissioner Ken Beswick, attending the NAWG meeting as an observer, doubts that the U.S. government would have the legal authority to discriminate against the board: “There is nothing in legislation – bilateral, trilateral or multilateral – that would provide the mechanism or the rationale for that.”
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The resolution elicited a mixed reaction from Canadian grain industry officials in attendance.
Larry Maguire, president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, said it shows that Canadian farmers could have better access to the U.S. market under a continental market.
“We certainly don’t have any problem with that resolution,” he said. “They always say they’re not against individual farmers. It’s the price discovery issue that annoys them.”
But Beswick said he’s skeptical of the implication that the total volume of Canadian imports doesn’t matter as much as who’s selling it.
“Today they say it’s the board, that centralized selling is the creature most foul,” he said. “But I’m not sure if they actually saw bigger volumes of grain (from non-board sources) they wouldn’t decide they didn’t like that either.”
U.S. wheat growers upset
Beswick said the cross-border trade issue really heated up last year when individual Canadian farmers and grain companies began shipping truckloads of grain to elevators across the border: “The volume of barley that went down there last year, which was huge, didn’t lead to problems. It was trucks at elevators, visible to U.S. wheat growers.”
Manitoba farmer Butch Harder, chair of the CWB advisory committee, said he was suspicious about the origins of the resolution.
“It really wouldn’t surprise me if some of our farm groups in Canada who don’t like the Canadian Wheat Board had sponsored that resolution indirectly,” he said.
Gary Broyles, the Montana farmer who introduced the resolution, denied that, although he did say members of the state’s grain growers association have discussed the issue with some like-minded Canadian farmers.
