The politics are raw and caustic. The ideological warriors are once more clashing over the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly, trying to get in one last battle before the issue is legislated out of existence.
But are many farmers paying attention?
I doubt it.
And that’s not just because they are busy growing crops and dealing with the million daily demands of farming. Most are turned off by decades of often-nasty debate over an issue that should never have become ideological but now seems nothing but ideological and political.
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This is an appalling situation because farmers could have a lot to gain or lose depending on whether the board monopolies are broken or maintained.
Wheat is a huge crop and marginal gains or losses mean a lot to farmer bottom lines.
The wheat board monopoly issue really should be seen as a vital commercial and business matter.
Instead, the political right has made it one of liberty and freedom and the political left one of collectivism and co-operation.
Left and right get all excited and wound up by polarized debates like this, but I think the average farmer is disgusted by them and just wishes they would go away.
The debate over the wheat board monopolies should always have been about:
• Does the wheat board earn significant premiums because of its single desk?
• Are those premiums large enough to compensate for the added complications that the system adds to the commercial grain handling and marketing system and for the restrictions it imposes on individual farmers’ marketing choices?
That’s something a hard-nosed commercial farmer should care deeply about. Most would be willing to sacrifice some freedom for a certain level of premium.
However, assessing that balance is not the centre of the argument, no matter how much the pugilists claim it is.
I know, I know — both left and right claim to care about these issues and have made many statements and issued reports supposedly proving their points. But most of these analyses are simply window dressing for an already accepted ideological position and are based on assumptions that often seem plain silly.
So that doesn’t help farmers much.
And while the wheat board itself has commissioned a number of studies over the years to look at the premiums it believes it earns, the studies somehow seem unconvincing, or at least not entirely convincing.
Most of the board-commissioned studies have employed academic economists.
The problem there is that these folks are incredibly good at taking statistics and sales numbers and running them through mathematical models.
However, that’s not a good way of revealing whether or not wheat board sales were made at true premium prices in the commercial marketplace. The benchmarking studies are a worthy best guess, but is still an indirect analysis.
The only ones who could know the real commercial reality are other grain traders who were in the marketplace at the same time.
These folks aren’t easy to hire to do a study because they’re working for competitors, have signed confidentiality agreements or just aren’t interested. But they would be the only people who would really be able to say.
However, there hasn’t seemed to be a screaming demand for more and greater analysis of this commercial matter because the argument has been primarily ideological.
To their credit, elected CWB directors have always told me they are convinced that the board earns some premium from some sales of some qualities of wheat to some buyers. That doesn’t seem unreasonable and hardly a boastful claim.
But many lefties I’ve spoken with over the years believe on faith that the board is wonderful and good in every way, regardless of the premiums it does or does not receive. It reflects the kind of world they would prefer to live in.
Righties have often given me the flipside of that: the board monopolies are an offence and an insult and regardless of whether or not it earns premiums, it’s simply not acceptable to impose on farmers.
So there hasn’t seemed to be a huge demand for better studies into the board’s premiums and costs, and the issue has generally lived in the political world.
Who’s to blame for that? Perhaps all the moderates in the commercial grain growing world who didn’t push their organizations to once and for all get a definitive answer on this question.
The centre didn’t hold its interest in this debate, so things flew apart to the political extremes. And now the matter is going to be settled permanently, but only politically.
