Pro-monopoly directors and senior managers argued strenuously for years that the Canadian Wheat Board could not survive without a monopoly.
In fact, they argued that the board had no point without a monopoly.
Those arguments were passionately embraced by many who saw the wheat board debate as an economic and ideological cause celebre, as a defining either/or situation of the free market versus a fair market.
However, they now create a credibility and marketing challenge for the organization as it works hard with little time on a crucial new campaign: convincing farmers and its own staff that the post-monopoly CWB not only has a point but is the best option for farmers to market their crops.
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It won’t be an easy task, but it’s one that senior board officials like Gord Flaten have embraced.
As the vice-president of marketing and sales crisscrosses the Prairies promoting the new board’s marketing options, Flaten is telling farmers to put aside the monopoly debate and simply think about whether the new offerings are something they want.
“Rather than trying to relate everything to the past debate, the important thing is to look at what’s the situation now,” said Flaten in an interview during the CWB breakfast at Manitoba Ag Days in Brandon.
“Is the CWB, the way we’re going to operate it, going to be a good option for farmers? Will the board’s array of short and longer-term pools, cash prices and marketing advisory services be something that farmers will want to use and actually benefit from?”
Marketing advisers and analysts have usually answered those questions with “maybe” and “probably,” while farmers interviewed at Manitoba Ag Days and St. Jean Farm Days in early and mid-January seemed to be both loyal to the board and willing to give it a shot.
“I’m going to keep an open mind about using CWB 2.0,” said one farmer at Ag Days.
“It depends on how they set it up,” said another.
“If it has to be all-or-nothing, it’ll be a tough choice,” said a third.
Most farmers said they would like to use the board and that they still trust it to put farmers first.
Farm marketing adviser Brenda Tjaden Lepp said pooling and the board’s financial guarantees from the federal government give it crucial advantages.
“How do you know you’re going to get paid? There are going to be lots of people coming into Western Canada wanting to sell farmers’ grain, but if you don’t know them, how can you know they will be able to pay you?” said Tjaden Lepp.
“That (federal) guarantee could be very important for a lot of farmers in the new environment.”
If the board ends up being the only organization offering pooling, that too could be important, she said, because it’s a simple form of risk management that could work for a portion of most farmers’ crops.
A different nut to crack for senior board managers is convincing staff that the agency has a point and can survive.
Many of them were imbued with years of pro-monopoly preaching by farmer-directors and senior staff and embraced that view. Now they have to wrench their thinking into a different direction, which could be tough for those who were attracted to working for the board because of its ideology.
“It’s a big change. It’s a big change for the company and therefore for the people that work for the company,” acknowledged Flaten.
“The mandate’s different, but there is a new mandate in a market that makes sense and creates some opportunities for us. We have the skill sets and the experience that will allow us to do well in that new environment.”
Neither of the two top men at the board, chief executive officer Ian White and chair Bruce Johnson, have been attached to ideologically focused monopoly rhetoric, so their ability to front the new non-monopoly organization does not seem hypocritical, most say.
At the CWB breakfast in Brandon, half a dozen CWB farm business representatives seemed gung-ho about their new role.
They have spent the winter talking to the thousands of farmers they know, who want to give the board a shot but need to be convinced the board can still do something for them.
