OTTAWA (Staff) – Grain farmers shouldn’t be expected to give up income in order to support processing industries, says a Canadian Wheat Board official.
Earl Geddes, the board’s manager of value-added programs, said the agency wants to support domestic grain users, but isn’t about to leave any money on the table.
He said the board has on occasion been asked to sell grain at discounted prices in order to help a new company get started in some sort of processing venture.
“We can’t afford to do that,” Geddes said in an interview. “Producers would have a legitimate reason to say we’re not extracting as much money as we can from the marketplace and that’s our job after all.”
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Geddes made his comments after speaking during a panel discussion on value-added at a meeting of the Canada Grains Council. Several speakers criticized the board for throwing up roadblocks to value-added businesses through its pricing and marketing policies.
Larry Maguire, president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, questioned the board’s role, saying it’s no coincidence there is much more value-added processing of non-board than board grains, at least in Manitoba.
“My neighbor with lentils and peas can bag and ship around the world,” he said, and questioned whether the wheat board can do a better job than an individual farmer dealing with a processor.
Geddes said it may be true there is less processing of wheat and barley, but that’s also the case in the United States, where there is no wheat board.
“We shouldn’t be in the road of value-added and I can’t see any place where we are,” he said.
The agency is willing to be flexible in its pricing and delivery policies, he said, and is currently reviewing rules that restrict the interprovincial movement of grain milled by the farmers who grow it and considering special exemptions for small mills.
Bill Hunt, general manager of the food and industrial group of Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, said the wheat board hasn’t thrown up any roadblocks to his company’s diversification efforts.
Room to talk
“To some degree we’re still pretty early in this, but I don’t think we can identify anything that’s been an issue that we couldn’t resolve,” he said.
Hunt added the pool is in a different position than some processors, because its owners are also grain farmers.
“You might argue: ‘I’d like to buy the raw material at half the price and I could make more money in my processing’, but I’m not sure that necessarily serves the farmers’ best interests,” he said.
