Alberta cattleman Dave Andrews is the first to concede the irony of it. The Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, by jumping into the Canadian Wheat Board debate as a dual market advocate, actually is working against the economic interests of some of its members.
Andrews, the Brooks, Alta., rancher who leads the CCA, says an open border for private feed barley sales probably would “level” feed costs on either side of the border.
In plain English, it would mean southern Alberta feedlots would lose the cost advantage they recently have enjoyed from barley prices lower than their Montana competitors pay.
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“I know it sounds strange, a bit of a mystery, really,” he says. “At least in the short term, feedlots here would lose the advantage they have had. But our members feel strongly about this on principle.”
He pondered the question a bit longer.
“You have to attribute this to a philosophical stand,” he added. “We think farmers should have the right to market their own production as they see fit.”
That just about sums up the way the wheat board debate has gone this summer.
On one level, it is an economic debate. Behind the controversy have been some sensible dollars-and-cents questions: Is it true, as critics charge, that the board has not been doing a good enough job finding markets and the highest possible prices for the grain it sells?
If not, why not? How could the board be made to work better, particularly as a barley marketer?
It was around those questions that open-market advocates hoped the debate would revolve. Instead, questions of economic self-interest were pushed aside by larger ideological and political issues.
Should co-operation and averaging be the principles upon which the grain marketing business is operated, or is the new reality better reflected by an “every farmer for himself” mentality?
Once ideology and philosophy begin to dominate any debate, values become more important than economic self-interest. So it was that feedlot owners found themselves advocating a political position which would hurt them in the short run.
So it was that some large farmers who could benefit, at least in the short run, from higher spot prices below the border found themselves arguing for a political solution which would deny them that option.
In the end, communal ideology proved more prevalent across the Prairies than the lone-ranger mentality.
It is why the federal agriculture minister appears poised to re-affirm the board’s existing export monopoly.
But what Ralph Goodale decides to do about reforming the way the Board operates, and accounts for itself, could in the long run be the more important announcement.
Once the ideological battle is won, farmers who support the board would be wise to turn a critical eye on it, using promised new accountability and transparency to examine its flaws and then to demand it be as good a marketer as it can be. It is the way ideological passions can be married with the self-interest of making a living.
