WINNIPEG (Staff) – Ted Allen says he doesn’t really care how the barley plebiscite turns out, because the wrong question is being asked.
Federal agriculture minister Ralph Goodale has said farmers will be asked this winter whether they want to sell all their feed and malting barley to the Canadian Wheat Board or on the open market.
“The question he is discussing posing is irrelevant,” United Grain Growers Ltd. president Allen said last week. “It doesn’t pertain to the debate and therefore it will solve nothing no matter which way it goes.”
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The debate among farmers has been over whether farmers should have more marketing options, including both the wheat board and the open market, and that’s what the vote should be about, he said.
But Goodale has taken that decision away from farmers and instead is asking them a different question.
Allen said it hasn’t been decided what role, if any, UGG will play in the upcoming campaign. While its members support an end to the board’s monopoly, they don’t want to get rid of the board altogether.
Owen McAuley, a former member of the Western Grain Marketing Panel, told delegates attending UGG’s annual meeting that the barley vote may settle the immediate short-term political issue but will do nothing to resolve fundamental problems in the barley
market.
Not enough choices
He doesn’t like that feed and malting barley are being lumped together in the same question, saying they are two distinct commodities and markets. Nor does he like the all-or-nothing choice between the board and the open market.
“The absolute black and white nature of it is probably just going to polarize the points of view,” he said, adding he hopes the campaign will at least produce a rational debate and not just “religious chanting.”
In an interview later, McAuley said he has no doubt the vote will produce an overwhelming victory for the board side, perhaps in the range of 85 percent. But the day after the vote, the issues will remain the same, with the board handling less than 15 percent of the feed barley and still having a huge impact on domestic feed barley prices.
“We have to understand and respect the wishes of a minority who want to do something different and accommodate their wishes if it doesn’t threaten our basic principles,” he said. Otherwise, “this issue is just going to keep regurgitating itself.”
