Tom Jackson, a candidate in district one for election as a Canadian Wheat Board director, says it is wrong to characterize him as a “dual market” advocate. The Western Producer included him among candidates with that label in a list published last week.
Jackson told The Producer on Oct. 23 he believes the CWB export monopoly will continue at least until the board provides some type of cash-pricing option for farmers.
Once that is operating, he said, it can be determined whether the export monopoly earns a premium for farmers who stay in the pooling system.
Read Also
Land crash warning rejected
A technical analyst believes that Saskatchewan land values could be due for a correction, but land owners and FCC say supply/demand fundamentals drive land prices – not mathematical models
“I will not take a position on the monopoly issue until we get a decent cash price system up and running.”
In any case, Jackson said, farmers have no choice since he does not believe wheat board minister Ralph Goodale would permit a plebiscite on ending the CWB monopoly until the board has tried a cash-pricing option.
Jackson, who farms at Ardrossan, Alta., gained wide publicity in 1996 for staging a hunger strike at the CWB offices in Winnipeg, seeking no-fee export permits for farmers, with lower “buy-back” prices when they bought their grain back from the CWB pool to sell directly to the United States.
That year, he was also secretary of the Alberta Marketing Choice Implementation Group.
Early this year, at a Western Canadian Wheat Growers convention, Jackson supported a resolution to allow farmers to forward-price 25 percent of their wheat.
He said such an option would allow farmers who do not support dual marketing to see that system can work. Not having a plan with incremental steps would mean farmers “deadly afraid” of the open market would prevent dual marketing.
Asked about that statement last week, Jackson said different groups can use terms differently: “What is your definition of dual marketing?”
He said the National Farmers Union believes it is dual marketing if farmers have a choice between cash pricing and pooling, even if the grain goes to the CWB either way.
By that definition, he said he would be a dual marketer, since he would like to see the day when a farmer could cash-price all his wheat and barley.
Other candidates in district one, which covers northern Alberta and the B.C. Peace River area, are Art Macklin and Albert Wagner.
Macklin says it is critical that the CWB monopoly continue, while Wagner wants the monopoly replaced with a dual market.
