Alberta’s agriculture minister says the Canadian Wheat Board should be
a voluntary marketing option for farmers.
To test the argument, Alberta wants to pilot an open domestic market,
Shirley McClellan told the Western Canadian Barley Growers convention
in Calgary.
“We are no threat. We could have a domestic marketing system that they
could compete very well in.”
McClellan said she has already discussed the concept with federal wheat
board minister Ralph Goodale, agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief and
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wheat board representatives.
“We can prove to ourselves that we are right or wrong. We think we are
right,” she said.
The province plans to continue working for change but McClellan
reiterated the government is not anti-wheat board. Recent board changes
such as farmer-director elections were a welcome change but McClellan
believes the entire board should be elected.
If the agency became a voluntary marketer, the board could protect its
interests with contracts. Farmers already successfully use contracts
for non-board grains, she said.
Other provinces do not have to join the plan.
One of Alberta’s beefs with the board is a perceived loss of
value-added processing for barley and durum. The province wants $20
billion worth of food processing and value-added production by 2010,
but is frustrated by the board’s grain buying monopoly, McClellan said.
A malting plant rumoured for construction in the Camrose area moved to
Idaho, where farmers can deal directly with maltsters and pasta plants.
Wheat board director Mike Halyk of Melville, Sask., challenged
McClellan by saying Alberta has almost half the malt capacity in Canada
but provides less than a quarter of the malting barley for those
plants. Also, the United States provides incentives for companies to
locate there.
Halyk said Alberta farmers already have favourable barley market
opportunities with a major beef feeding industry.
“Your successes have been too great. You have a huge feeding industry
here which I wish we had in eastern Saskatchewan,” he said.
“There is nowhere else in the world where prices for feed grains are as
strong as they are here in Alberta.”
McClellan replied that Alberta farmers are moving away from wheat board
control because prices are too low and the monopoly prohibits them from
selling wheat or barley in the U.S. on the open market.
“In Alberta we learned a long time ago you don’t grow something and
expect somebody else to market it. You grow a product that has a market
and that’s what we want to do,” she said. “Give us a level playing
field and we’ll make those decisions.”
The barley growers later passed two resolutions calling for a voluntary
marketing system for western grain.
