Farmers need the federal government to clarify two things about its plans for the Canadian Wheat Board:
• what is it planning to do?
• when is it planning to do it?
Farmers have the right to know these things because they’re seeding a crop right now and can’t afford to see their marketing plans, strategies and decisions mucked up by vagueness, confusion or precipitous action.
For 90 percent of commercial farmers, this isn’t an ideological or political matter but a vital business risk management issue.
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Farmers who want to be able to rely upon pooling for their 2011-12 crop had better know if the government plans anything that could endanger the existence of well-functioning pools.
Farmers who have used or are planning to use the board’s Producer Payment Options for pricing and hedging the 2011-12 crop had better be told if government plans are going to affect their plans.
And if farmers will be able to use open market hedging and contracting tools directly, they’d better know that now.
Marketing advisers I called about this issue in the days after the Conservatives won their long-sought majority government were relaxed about the situation, feeling the wheat board’s PPOs would be safe for the coming crop year and doubting major legislative action would come immediately.
“It’s business as usual,” is what they are telling the farmers they advise.
But I get the sense a big “gulp” is going through the grain industry, and perhaps even within the government, now that it can do pretty much whatever it wants in the next four years.
For the government, it can make clear decisions and will own the results, good or bad. That’s a sobering thought. Whatever it does, it had better do well or it will haunt it not so long from now when it’s looking again for farmers’ votes.
For the grain industry and grain transportation system, a less ruminative “gulp” is taking place as grain companies ponder the greatly expanded credit facilities they’ll need to buy farmers’ grain and the railways examine the operating, regulatory and contractual complexities that could arise if major changes happen quickly.
While opponents of the board’s monopolies are keen to end or alter them, I got the sense from speaking to a couple that they would accept something being done for 2012-13 rather than 2011-12.
I can’t see why the government would try to make a major move for 2011-12. Why rush? The Conservative government now has a majority. It has the luxury, which no government for seven years has had, to be able to be deliberative and focused on long -term planning.
I’m not interested in the age-old ideological and political fights over the CWB, but prairie grain farming is a multibillion-dollar business upon which tens of thousands of farmers rely for their income, and I am keenly interested in knowing what’s going to happen.
So I will restate my questions to the government on behalf of farmers:
• what are you planning to do?
• when are you planning to do it?
Get us the answer soon, please.
