A group of small shippers and processors wants the Canadian Wheat Board to exempt container shipments of wheat and barley from its single desk authority.
If the board doesn’t agree, the group wants the federal government to force the marketing agency to comply.
“We are not asking your government to take action at this time,” the Western Canadian Marketers and Processors Association said in a March 12 letter to CWB minister Chuck Strahl.
“However, we ask your government be prepared to act if the response from the CWB is not favourable.”
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That’s the same day the association sent a letter to the board requesting the change.
Spokesperson Vicki Dutton said the association’s members are aware of small niche markets for wheat and barley that the board isn’t servicing and are in a good position to supply those markets with identity-preserved container shipments.
“In our view, implementing such a policy would represent incremental export business to the total shipments of barley and wheat, but would provide significant opportunity to our membership,” she said in a letter to the wheat board.
In an interview, she said customers often ask special crop shippers if they can buy wheat or barley from them.
“I get inquiries regularly from the Philippines, from the U.S. and from China,” she said, estimating she turns away 5,000 tonnes of potential business a year because of the export rules.
Dutton added the total volume that would move under the association’s proposal would be small relative to the board’s total export program and wouldn’t undermine the single desk.
“If the board feels threatened by this, I’d have to question their insecurity.”
CWB spokesperson Maureen Fitzhenry said the board’s initial response to the request is that the method of transporting wheat or barley is irrelevant to the board’s marketing mandate.
“The issues raised by granting exemptions to containers are no different than the issues for trucks or hopper cars or anything else,” she said.
“It erodes the value of the single desk to Canadian farmers because you no longer have a single seller of Canadian wheat and barley into the international market place.”
A company that wants to make export sales can apply to become an accredited exporter of the board, said Fitzhenry, although she acknowledged that some of the requirements to qualify might be onerous for a small shipper.
The board has programs in place to allow small processors to buy grain directly from producers and for producers to make export sales through the producer-direct sales program.
She said the board is prepared to meet with the association to better understand its proposal and explain the board’s position.
Dutton said her group would prefer that the board simply make the change but will do “whatever it takes” to accomplish the change, including lobbying the federal government.
