REGINA – It calls itself the business voice of agriculture and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business is telling Canada’s agriculture ministers that its members want an end to the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly.
The message will be received as confirmation by the Conservatives and as nothing more than big-farmer right wing rhetoric by the pro-monopoly opposition.
The CFIB said its members include more than 5,000 farmers, with 2,000 of those on the Prairies.
A report sent to federal and provincial ministers this week indicates that out of 347 members who responded to a survey in January, 55 percent believe the end of the monopoly would help their farms. The report also contained data from previous CFIB questionnaires.
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Eighty-one percent across the Prairies – 89 percent in Alberta, 78 percent in Saskatchewan and 72 percent in Manitoba – said producers should have a marketing option.
And 83 percent said that despite the fact 10 of 15 CWB board members are elected by farmers, the board is not controlled by farmers. Almost half were dissatisfied with board performance and decisions.
“These results demonstrate CFIB members’ continued desire for wheat and malting barley marketing choices,” said the federation report sent to ministers. “The argument that the CWB single desk system extracts premiums from wheat and barley markets no longer overrides the desire of the majority of producers to freely market their grain in a dynamic open market.”
The two predominant reasons cited for ending the monopoly were an improvement in market signals to grain farmers and an incentive for growth in the prairie value-added sector.
Gaylene Simpson, agribusiness policy analyst for the CFIB based in Regina, acknowledged that critics of the federation’s credibility to speak on farm issues dismiss it as the voice of big agribusiness and corporate farms.
“That simply isn’t true,” she said. “We have large successful farmers in our membership but we also have medium-sized and smaller farmers. Our producer members are attracted to us by our business orientation, whatever their size.”
A CFIB analysis of its farmer members says 52 percent have gross sales of $500,000 or more, while 40 percent are in the $100,000 to $499,000 range and eight percent have sales of less than $100,000.
