BRANDON, Man. – Grant Maddess figures if he could catch a ride on the value-adding wave, he could add up to $30,000 to the revenues of his Deloraine, Man., grain farm.
But last week, he told a Senate hearing on Canadian Wheat Board reform that board policies are denying him that chance.
“It just isn’t fair or logical,” the 45-year-old said in an interview after he told senators any reform of the CWB should include making it voluntary. “The government is encouraging us to value add and one of its agencies is stopping us.”
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Maddess said he is interested in joining a closed co-operative in nearby North Dakota which plans a pasta plant.
Members join and must commit a fixed amount of production each year to the plant. Each share would commit the owner to deliver one bushel.
He would buy 9,000 shares.
“I could add a lot to the value of each bushel by sharing in the profits from that plant,” he said. “It is a real opportunity for me. The wheat is going to be worth a lot more coming out the other end. And that plant probably can’t go forward if they don’t get some durum committed from Canada.”
Yet he complained to senators that under the CWB buyback policy which requires him to sell his durum to the board and then buy it back at a higher price, most of the potential profit would be lost.
Involvement in the pasta co-op venture is rendered unappealing.
“I would have to sell my durum to the CWB, buy it back and then pay a grain company a fee for the paperwork,” he told the Senate agriculture committee March 24. “All this so I could deliver my grain to my pasta plant. That is a great way to encourage value-added.”
Maddess was one of several farmers who complained that the monopoly retards the development of processing on the Prairies.
“The system doesn’t work for a processor,” said Glenn Pizzey, owner of a flour mill in Angusville, Man.
He said he has quit milling wheat because the buyback takes his profit. Instead, he mills flax and makes flax products.
He said 90 percent of his sales are export.
Alberta Liberal Senator Dan Hays wondered how the board could change its practices to help processors without ending or eroding the monopoly.
“We started in 1990 as optimistic young people,” replied Pizzey. “We were going to work within the system. We were going to make it work. Frankly, it just doesn’t work.”
