WINNIPEG – Paternalistic attitudes are par for the course at the Canadian Wheat Board, according to two groups who made presentations to the Western Grain Marketing Panel here last week.
Officials from the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association and United Grain Growers told panelists farmers are well-educated and have lots of marketing experience from non-board crops.
The groups said their members can’t wait to start marketing their own wheat and barley.
Chief commissioner Lorne Hehn said during a speech most farmers who think they are marketing are just pricing their grain.
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“I don’t know of any farmers that are putting cargoes together and doing the ocean freight and all of the other things required to make a sale,” Hehn explained later in an interview.
“I think that’s insulting,” said Ted Allen, president of UGG. “There are a lot of farmers who market a wide variety of crops that are non-board and do a very excellent job.”
Allen said he thinks the wheat board will cause Canada problems with the United States during the next round of trade negotiations, likely in 1999.
Give up the fight
Allen said the last round showed it was useless for Canada to dig in its heels about a trade irritant against a major power like the United States.
“I would not like to see us make the same mistake twice,” Allen said, referring to the ground lost by supply-managed groups.
Allen said his company would treat the CWB like “just another customer” under a dual market, and would treat CWB business as well as its own.
But Ray Howe of the Saskat-chewan Wheat Pool said his company disagrees.
“We’re in this as a business and the only way we can benefit our members is to work as a business,” Howe said. He warned farmers would get the short end of the stick in a dual market.
Panelist Owen McAuley asked participants whether a dual market within Canada would be accepted by disgruntled farmers.
Harvey Brooks, head of corporate policy for CWB, said that type of market would hurt the value-added industry in Western Canada. He said the price paid by mills and other businesses is based on North American street prices. He also said mills would have a difficult time buying directly from farmers in the face of falling markets, when the price return outlook was higher than the U.S. cash price.
Kevin Archibald, chair of the wheat growers association, said a domestic dual market would be a good first step for older farmers not used to marketing grain.
