LETHBRIDGE, Alta. – If Canadian farmers were able to choose whether to offer grain to a selling agency or on the open market, an official with a Montana grain organization says it would mean the demise of the Canadian Wheat Board.
However, Jim Christianson, executive vice-president of the Montana Wheat and Barley Commission, said he believes the wheat board can’t survive in today’s trade climate anyway.
“Either the wheat board is 100 percent in control, or they’re not going to be in control at all,” he told reporters at the Alberta winter wheat association meeting here two weeks ago.
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Even though there are advantages for western Canadian farmers to use a single desk agency, the trend is toward fewer government buying agencies, he said.
“I can see some advantages in the Canadian Wheat Board on the Canadian side in terms of maintaining quality and settlements,” said Christianson.
Farmers don’t worry about getting paid because the government guarantees they will get their money and the wheat board sets terms with clients who need credit, he said. The board is also able to blend good sales with poor ones.
In the United States, there are producer rumblings that the board distorts the world grain market by selling too high in some markets and too low in others, he said.
Flood of barley
However, farmers in the Dakotas and Montana worry if the board is dissolved it would create a flood of barley into their territories.
Canadians caused a stir in Montana two years ago when several showed up with truckloads of grain at elevators in Shelby.
“As much as anything it created a logistics problem.”
Montana farmers with wheat contracts couldn’t get into their own elevators to deliver. Transportation is arranged weeks in advance so there were limited rail cars available.
Canadians could sell into the U.S. if they had contracts but some harmonization of varieties and grading systems would be necessary between the two countries.
“It’s largely a question of semantics. It would be a painful process but from the buyer’s perspective it could work,” said Christianson.
The Montana Wheat and Barley Commission, based in Great Falls, is supported by a variable checkoff of a maximum of one cent per bushel on wheat, while the barley levy ranges from one to 1.5 cents per hundredweight. The commission manages promotion and research projects.
