In his latest letter to the editor ( “Rhetorical mud,” Sept. 9) Stewart Wells slams the Western Canadian Wheat Growers (Association) for pointing out Canadian farmers can’t participate in price rallies as we could in an open market.
Using misinformation and half-truths, Wells states Canadian farmers received about $8.53 per bushel in 2007–08 for 12.5 percent protein hard red spring wheat through the Canadian Wheat Board while American farmers selling in August 2007 only received about $5.53 US per bu.
What he conveniently forgets to mention is that while some American farmers did sell early, others that sold later received $10 per bu., some $15 and some over $20 per bu. …
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The farmers who sold early were also able to take their entire payment up front, pay down bills and buy fertilizer that was then $320 per tonne. Canadian farmers that did receive the $8.53 per bu. didn’t get all their money until December 2008 and in the spring of 2008 had to cope with fertilizer prices of over $1,200 per tonne.
Price per bushel doesn’t paint the entire picture on when a farmer decides he should sell grain.
Wells doesn’t mention the absolutely dismal marketing of durum by the CWB the last two years, where we were forced to carry over more than 20 percent and 40 percent of our inventory in respective years.
He doesn’t mention the CWB’s lousy job of marketing barley during the current rally.
While not knowing anything about my farm, he arrogantly thinks he knows what is best for me and all farmers in Western Canada.
If he wants to use the monopoly, that’s fine, but why does he think his right to use the CWB is so much greater than my right not to?
Wells and others that strongly support the monopoly believe that anyone who questions anything about the CWB is wrong without ever seeming to realize the CWB isn’t run by some divine figure. It is run by people and by nature, people make mistakes. It is the job of the wheat growers and other organizations to point out these mistakes and try to improve things on the farm. Business, not ideology, should run the CWB.
Maybe Wells’ strong support for the monopoly stems from the fact that as an organic farmer, he can buy his grain back from the board for pennies per bushel and then he is free to sell it himself to whoever he wants. Why isn’t that privilege extended to all farmers?
Stewart Wells should keep in mind the monopoly doesn’t exist today because it gets farmers better prices and it doesn’t exist today because farmers that grow the majority of the grain delivered to it support the monopoly.
It exists only because federal judges say it exists and eastern politicians want it to exist. That has to change.
Con Johnson,
Bracken, Sask.
