KVD concern
To the Editor:
While the Canadian Grain Commission tries to use the media to put a favourable spin on how they are handling kernel visual distinguishability and promoting the new utility wheat class, they neglect to paint the true reality of the situation.
The continued requirement for KVD on CWRS classes and the zero tolerance policies on crop registration in reality means that the Canadian Grain Commission is prepared to sacrifice the hard red winter wheat class in Western Canada.
How can a wheat class survive when there has not been a new single winter wheat variety registered since 2001? How can breeding programs continue to get funding when they cannot market the varieties they produce? Winter wheat has a yield advantage over spring wheat but if new varieties are not released, that yield advantage is slowly eroded as other crops continue to improve.
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So why is the grain commission prepared to destroy one of the few winter crop options we have? They claim it is to protect the reputation and quality of our main spring wheat class. On the surface that would seem to make sense but in reality winter wheat poses little threat to our CWRS wheat.
The spring wheat that needs to be protected is our higher protein grade one and two wheats. Lower grades are often already blended.
The reality is that as we push winter wheat yields higher it becomes harder to hold or maintain protein. The CWB is already aware of the problems producers are having in meeting the 11.5 percent minimum protein requirement for the select class. The substantial increase in nitrogen fertilizer values also adds to the fact that protein will continue to be an issue for winter wheat producers. …
The grain commission claims they will not move on KVD until they have a proven driveway tester to identify wheat classes. This in spite of the fact that there are numerous examples of grain being segregated without KVD requirements.
In the winter wheat class we have select and non select varieties. In durum we have Navigator types and regular durum. In barley we have malt and feed barley. In canola we have regular and specialty oil types.
At my local elevator individual samples are kept on every load I deliver. Declarations are already in place to indicate the penalties for misrepresenting the grain delivered. We already have had to deal with the issue of non registered American wheat varieties getting mixed with our HRS wheat. KVD does not make this issue go away. …
So while the ag standing committee on agriculture is recommending the elimination of KVD as well as numerous producer groups in Western Canada, the grain commission has dug in its heels. So the grain commission needs to tell the real story. They are not providing new opportunities to producers. They are destroying one of our best options for a biodiverse cropping system.
– Craig Shaw,
Lacombe, Alta.
Strahl support
In regards to Stewart Wells saying that (federal agriculture minister Chuck) Strahl “has truly performed well below everyone’s expectations,” (Open Forum, March 8) I would like to say “speak for yourself, Stewart.”ÂÂ
There are actually close to half of producers that are quite happy with the way that Strahl has gone about things with the wheat board and to say otherwise is to only bury your head in the sand.
The time has come for you and all your left wing groups and supporters to realize that some of us do not want to be dictated to as to where we sell our grain.
This is not a new concept, it is just something you choose to ignore. Rather than make pointless arguments and sayings like the one quoted above, you could maybe better spend your time learning about an open market. Otherwise, like the wheat board, you will be caught with your pants down.
I realize the vote will be done at the time of this being printed but I just want to say this: for all those complaining about their envelopes being tracked, which they can’t be, what is the problem? Are you embarrassed that you voted for a communistic, socialist state enterprise?
I am quite open and happy with the way I voted and don’t care who can track my vote back. Seems to me that there are a few people and groups getting a little worried about the vote going to remove barley from the board. Well, it’s only 50 years late.
Chuck Strahl, just so you know, you do have support in the farming sector. Keep up the good work.
– Nevin Morrow,
Kelvington, Sask.
Debt service
Perhaps Canada’s “new government” has a better appreciation of the business of agriculture than one might think. It seems they are aware of the damage de-monopolizing the Canadian Wheat Board will do to grain producer economics. In the midst of the barley plebiscite, they thoughtfully inserted an information brochure reminding Western Producer subscribers of the Farm Debt Mediation Service provided by Agriculture and Agrifood Canada.
It seems they recognize that farmers will be in even more serious financial straits after they lose the annual $620 million benefit fairly earned through the services of the single desk.
I wonder if producers found relief in being reminded of the service helping them manage insolvency on the grain farm?
– Mike Klein,
Calgary, Alta.
Wildlife numbers
Wildlife experts have always blamed the wolf for imbalances in mostly moose, elk populations in Canada for decades. As past president of a private fishing and hunting club in northern Quebec, I witnessed firsthand a similar event in the area our club was located.
The club’s fishing and hunting lease encompassed 22 and a half sq. miles and was established in the 1940s. To address the complaints by the hunting public, the local wildlife officers reported that a bounty on wolves would definitely cause a healthier moose population.
As long-time members of that community, we understood the problem to be cyclical, and increased logging operations had probably sent a lot of the game to quieter areas.
In that particular area ski-doos and planes were the vehicle of choice as access was formidable by foot or small truck. Needless to say, some wolves were killed and lo and behold years later, hunting returned to normal, especially when commercial logging activity disappeared. …
How can wildlife experts ignore the impact human expansion has on the dynamics of our wildlife habitat? The solutions are simple. Adjust the human activity to suit a harmonious balance within nature’s right to be. Adjust trapping and hunting licences.
If and when it’s required, legislate tougher laws for poaching. Educate and inform the local population of the responsibilities landholders play in managing a healthy habitat for their wildlife neighbours. …
– R. Livingston,
Calgary, Alta.
What choice?
Dual market promoters always make the statement that farmers need choice when marketing their barley and that the loss of the single desk will provide choice for producers. The reference also implies that choice will imply better revenues for farmers.
These statements are misleading. Right now, farmers do have a choice between the single desk market for the export feed market or the price being offered by the local Canadian feed market, the open market.
Whichever price is better decides what proportion of the crop is committed by producers to the export feed market or the local feed market. These are two separate markets with separate prices and producers can decide which one will get their crop.
For export malt barley, producers can select various pricing options if they decide not to stay within the normal pooling option. If the single desk is removed, the option will be the open market price, similar to what producers see with canola crop. If pooling programs were viable without a single desk, then why don’t we see these programs with canola, a crop without a single desk?
So when someone says producers need choice, the question should then be choice between what? The remaining two or three large grain companies who all use the open market model?
– Susan Korneychuk,
Emerald Park, Sask.
At U.S. mercy
A letter from David Anderson, MP for Swift Current, states the Canadian Wheat Board is not needed. Someone must have spiked his coffee to come with senseless comments in his letter.
Anderson says American producers sell their grain without monopoly. Wrong. The United States has four or five multinational grain companies that control 80 percent of the world grain market. They set the prices for farmers in the U.S. and that price of grain is spilled into Canadian farmers.
Why (does the U.S. subsidize its) farmers? Can those multinationals give U.S. farmers grain prices to the cost of production and still make huge profits.
One hundred years of (the) U.S. open market system has yielded only approximately 20 years of break-even or profit years. (That’s) some record that U.S. farmers have.
If the Conservatives and some commodity farm groups in Canada get their way in destroying the CWB, the farmers in Canada will be (at) the same financial mercy as our U.S. farmers, controlled by four or five multinationals.
The CWB is the last that farmers have some control, with rules and regulations, and it is run by elected directors. Farmers in Western Canada need to stand up for their rights and not to be bullied or controlled by politicians of this country.
– Eric Sagan,
Melville, Sask.
Surrender
What’s the dream of every little boy growing up on the farm? To one day carry on what generations before have created.
I was one of those little boys. The only problem in my situation is March 24, 2007, the day of our family farm auction.
Why does it feel like we are surrendering? Farmers across the country put their heart and soul into their operation and these days have hopes of at least breaking even.
Everybody points fingers to blame the other guy, the government, the Canadian Wheat Board, the input companies. And don’t get me wrong, they are a big part of the problem.
I myself believe that when this balloon in farm costs started around 10 years ago, we sat on the sidelines and let it happen. Farming is an industry like oil, mining, logging, but the only difference is we are willing to accept what people are willing to pay for our product that day.
Farmers need to unite and put a stop to the charades. I wish things could turn around and have farming become an industry where a young guy like myself could actually have a go at. There is nothing I’d rather be doing, but if I can’t make a comfortable living, how will I raise my family some day?
I have recently left Saskatchewan and moved to B.C. to try to start a new life, and not a day goes by when I don’t wish I was still at home.
And someday if things can turn around for good, I’ll be the first one to come back across the border and be farming again. I won’t let my love for farming go, I want to stay connected to what’s happening, and my subscription to the Producer will be one way to do that.
– Mike Kleckner,
Elkford, B.C.
Pay the price
In Albert Wagner’s letter to the editor (March 8) he states that as wheat and barley have been under the control of the Canadian Wheat Board, the farmers have paid the price of demurrage charges, etc., ie., lost sales due to derailments, strikes, cold weather, slow delivery by the CWB.
I did believe Mr. Wagner had a better grasp of business dealings than what he is trying to portray, that these costs are being passed on to us by the CWB and its monopoly. He states the CWB refuses to make any changes to protect producers from these added costs.
These problems are beyond the CWB’s control.
The CWB has more clout than farmers do to deal with the railways. There is transparency in the fact that the CWB is telling us what it is costing us to deal with all the vagaries of our grain handling system. There is no transparency in the open market figures quoted as daily street prices.
(Wagner) is trying to tell us that in the open market these costs are dealt with between the shipper and the railways but being the astute businessman he claims to be, he knows right well the costs are still paid by farmers in reduced street prices and widened basis levels. He states we can lock in our basis values, but that doesn’t say what the final price will be….
The reason there are three questions on the barley plebiscite is because the government is hoping enough farmers don’t understand the situation and will vote either number two or number three thinking they mean more or less the same thing.
By adding number two and number three they hope they will have a better chance of getting the result they are looking for…
– Bernie von Tettenborn,
Round Hill, Alta.
Communal farming
If you are thinking of going farming the conventional way, to make a living you had better think again, as many farmers’ wives are working in town to keep farms operating. They have no time for their children, going to church, visiting or gardening. Is this called living?
Farming must return to sustainable communal ways in order to have a decent way of life….
The best areas for this is the north central part of the Prairies. In Manitoba it can be further south….
– Guy Talbourdet,
Saint Paul, Alta.
Oat perspective
I am shocked at the lack of full understanding that the farming community has on the subject of the (Canadian) Wheat Board.
Our company, International Quality Forage and Feeds Inc., exports forage products, oats and other equine products to markets in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East. We recently received a request for 1,000 tonnes of barley per month for an animal feed mill in the Middle East that normally obtains barley products from Australia but since it is having a drought they have opted to go Canadian. We already ship oats to this marketplace.
I am also a small farmer and cannot sell my barley to this animal feed market. When I approached the CWB to get an export permit, I was transferred to one of the licensed exporters. Because of the paperwork, time delays and added cost put on by the CWB, it is neither a financially viable nor efficient option. We have been forced to offer only a small portion of this product from Eastern Canada and from the U.S. We missed an opportunity to market western Canadian barley into this niche market.
This is absurd. I cannot sell my barley I grow to a market that exceeds in price what I can get locally in the domestic market. and I did get a good price of $3.14 at the bin for a bulk of this year’s crop, yet I can go to Quebec and Nova Scotia and sell their feed grains?
We are a small company, but how many other opportunities are there out there to sell our feed barley? Our customers do not understand why I can buy out of only part of Canada but not sell my barley directly. They also do not understand why I can sell those oats, rye and canola products but not feed barley.
As a matter of interest, I have kept a permit book for over 24 years but have not been able to profitably sell any of my feed barley to the CWB for at least 10 years. I can always get more for my feed barley in the local feed markets. Just think of the opportunities if I could sell my feed barley to markets outside of Canada.
The time has come to make some major changes to the way that farmers can sell their products. Let’s forget the scare tactics the pro-CWB people believe. …
I also find it ironic that the federal Liberal leader and leader of the opposition has stated in a press release that even the Quebec farmers agree with keeping the CWB. Well no wonder, since they are not compelled to sell their products to only one desk.
For all of the CWB supporters who are into big scare tactics, let’s try the dual marketing option, and if the CWB is so great and so beneficial, all of the farmers will gravitate to the CWB. If the CWB is doing such a great job, in a couple of years this debate would be over. …
– Edward J. Shaw,
President/CEO International Quality Forage and Feed Inc.,
Carstairs, Alta.
Can’t compete
I thought that it was only in places like North Korea where people celebrate upon learning the central government is to increase import taxes from zero to 270 percent. I was wrong. It also happens here in Canada.
Consumers in Canada have demonstrated an overwhelming preference for milk protein concentrates produced by low cost foreign suppliers. Imports of milk protein concentrates are at record levels. They enable manufacturers of ice cream, cheese and other dairy products to satisfy the wants of consumers to the best of their ability.
If Canadian consumers actually preferred domestically produced ingredients, local dairy producers wouldn’t have to worry about foreign competition.
But the provincial milk marketing boards, which sell raw milk to processors in Canada, are nowhere close to matching foreign competition, especially with regard to price.
Competition often encourages producers to innovate. In the Canadian dairy industry, it apparently causes some individuals who under other circumstances would know better, to beg parliamentarians for protection behind import taxes of 270 percent.
The new import tax has been portrayed as a benevolent attempt by Ottawa to protect Canadian dairy producers from ruinous foreign competitors, especially those located in the United States, the European Union and in New Zealand.
But who does this protectionism actually protect? It protects domestic milk producers not from foreign competitors, who have no power to coerce Canadian consumers into buying their goods, but from their own fellow Canadians who demonstrably prefer to purchase dairy products made from cheaper sources….
According to dairy lobbyists, all this is necessary because “we have no idea of the standards in other countries.”
Fortunately, some local dairy producers have provided strong evidence of their own standards. They have no reservation about using the coercive power of government to not only harm neighbours and friends, but other producers in Canada who … will have to get by with lower returns.
– Danny LeRoy,
Cap-Rouge, Que.
Who gains?
I have been reading Peter C.Newman’s The Secret Mulroney Tapes in which Mulroney states that he accepted, after leaving politics, a directorship with Archer Daniels Midland, one of the biggest U. S. multinational grain companies. I searched the ADM website and Mulroney is still on the board as a (director).
Why would an American multinational grain company want a former Conservative prime minister of Canada on their board? This is the same prime minister that boasts the deregulation of Canada’s railways as one of his greatest achievements.
Why would the current Conservative government be so focused on undermining the Canadian Wheat Board? Is this simply an interesting set of circumstances or does it begin to explain why (prime minister Stephen) Harper’s minority Conservative government is fast-tracking destructive changes to the CWB?
Who appears to have the most to gain from this exercise, farmers or political carpetbaggers? You can do your research and reach your own conclusions.
– G. A. LeBlanc,
St. Denis, Sask.
Salary worth
Your page 50 of March 1 just about made me as mad as a fellow could get …
There is not a man on this earth that really earns or is worth but a percentage of (Agricore United CEO Brian Hayward’s) $750,000 salary.
As long as this type of nonsense prevails in the business world of corporations, we farmers are lost down river without a paddle. We will be ripped off on every sale as we have no call on our products’ value, and ripped off on every purchase to satisfy a seller’s profit margin.
I feel real anger for seeing printed this man’s earnings. To be in his shoes and have people reading, if it were my wages as him, guilt and hiding away from public eye I would envisage feeling. How many farmers have lost their farms and livelihood through hideous payouts and gross profiteering?
– Nick Parsons,
Farmington, B.C.
Wrongly blamed
In regard to John Fefchak’s letter, Redefine progress (Open Forum, Feb. 22). I must say that he makes me wonder how much of present day agriculture he has actually seen.
Is he aware that the disposal of manure from hog barns and feedlots is governed by strict rules? Is he aware that livestock manure is recycled into farmland in a very accurate way with application rates tied to soil analysis to produce crops and forage? Which river does Mr. Fefchak’s own domestic waste end up in?
Agriculture has been wrongly blamed for pollution for a long time. About 35 years ago the predominant cereal seed treatments had some mercury in them. They were banned and rightly so. We as farmers took a lot of urban flak for using such bad stuff.
Today we have more lakes and rivers than ever with mercury contamination and in many areas the general population still dumps their mercury-containing florescent light bulbs in with the rest of their garbage. It is easy to blame agriculture if you don’t know the facts.
– Allen Spady,
Wainwright, Alta.
Dispelling myths
I would like to comment on the ongoing CWB debate. My opinion, as a south-central Alberta grains and oilseeds producer, is that I need to be able to market my wheat and barley in the same manner that I now sell my canola and that is in a multiple seller environment to the highest
bidder.
Domestic feed barley prices in my area are always much higher than CWB PROs and are usually higher than the CWB PROs for malt barley as well.
Therefore, selling my feed barley into the CWB is not an option and I would also like to have the option of selling directly to a maltster, thereby eliminating the CWB as a middleman.
A myth that is out there is that the CWB gets a premium price because it is a monopoly seller. The truth is that it is only one of many sellers in the world market. It is only a monopoly buyer and I have no choice but to let it market my wheat and barley for me.
Another myth is that without the single desk there would be 100,000 farmers selling into the market and that would drive the price down. Wrong.
For me and for most other producers it would be a simple matter of letting the bad internationals sell our high quality Canadian wheat and barley as they have done already for the past 30 years with our canola and it has worked out very well. …
Another myth is that the CWB gets us a premium for our wheat and barley.
If we compare hard red northern wheat and No. 1 Canadian western hard red spring both at 14 percent protein, we find that a Billings, Montana wheat producer receives on average 90 cents more per bushel than his Canadian counterpart. On the week ending Jan. 16, 2007, it worked out to
$1 a bu.
For my farm this amounts to $60,000. I cannot afford this and
I ask, where is the CWB premium here? …
– Glenn Sawyer,
Acme, Alta.
Qualified care
In recent years the squabbles between equine massage therapists, equine physiotherapists, equine dental technicians/dentists, equine chiropractors, equine naturopaths, equine acupuncturists, equine osteopaths and veterinarians have been made annoyingly public.
Having been a horse owner for over 40 years, I indeed want to access the services of a qualified caregiver for the job, be it hoof care, surgery or dentistry.
As a long-term horse breeder I am interested in advances in horse health issues. I am excited about the new veterinary college planned for Calgary and I am intrigued by the new technology planned for the campus of the veterinary college at the University of Saskatchewan. …
Even though I want to be informed of the newest and the latest in the horse world, I do not want to be involved in the equine health care providers’ growing pains.
I doubt if I’m alone in saying all I want to hear is that these groups of equine health practitioners are working together to set standards to improve total equine health.
This must be done with dignity and with respect for each other. It will reflect the professional and ethical manner in which equine health care should be delivered.
This is not a new idea. The Health Professions Act of Alberta is being revamped to accommodate advances in human health and dental care with resulting education that has become standard…
Since I belong to a group of health care professionals that has gone through the process required of the HPA without making it a big issue with the public, I find it a stressful experience to hear a lecture about what a bad job other equine practitioners are doing in an effort to promote the speaker’s own career choice. It is unprofessional and unethical to do so.
My advice is to get together, get along and get it done.
– Brenda L. Baker,
Millarville, Alta.
