REGINA (Staff) – Two competing visions of prairie agriculture vied for media attention and public support last week.
Some 350 farmers gathered in an auditorium north of the city to demand an end to the Canadian Wheat Board’s export monopoly and the freedom to sell their grain directly to foreign customers.
Outside the hall, and later at the downtown offices of agriculture minister Ralph Goodale, about 250 National Farmers Union members marched to show their support of the board.
Demands presented
By the time the day was over, both sides had made their speeches, talked to the assembled reporters and presented their demands to the federal government.
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And both sides were ready to claim victory.
Major changes in prairie farm policy evolve into mass movements, said dual marketer Jim Pallister of Portage la Prairie, and that’s what he thinks will come out of the Regina rally.
“The people who are here today will go back to their communities and discuss the idea and create a new consensus,” he said.
But for NFU member Jim Robbins of Delisle, Sask., there’s no question that his side won the day.
“They just didn’t have the numbers,” he said, adding the day’s events left him feeling better about the future of the wheat board. “I consider their demonstration to have been a failure and failures don’t help.”
