Maintaining stance National Farmers Union president Terry Boehm contends costs for producers will rise
Prairie grain farmers are having a good year, but that should not be attributed to the end of the CWB monopoly, says National Farmers Union president Terry Boehm.
He also argued during a video appearance before the House of Commons agriculture committee Dec. 6 that government changes to agricultural regulations and rules are turning the clock back to an era when farmers were at the mercy of market forces and powerful monopolies.
During the past century, farmers have lobbied for and won the right to have a greater say in the government regulatory and co-operative grain system, the Saskatchewan farmer told MPs during the first NFU appearance before the committee in months.
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“We’re systematically dismantling that collaborative system under the guise of buzzwords like modernization, rationalization, an assortment of pieces along that line and really recreating an adversarial system where farmers fundamentally end up paying for all the costs in the system, as they always have,” said Boehm.
After weeks of testimony about how this year, with its record grain and oilseed prices, has been a good one for prairie farmers, Conservative MPs pressed Boehm on how farmers are doing in the aftermath of the CWB monopoly.
The Conservatives pressed for and eventually won the battle over ending the CWB monopoly, but the NFU was one of the strongest defenders of the single desk.
Peace River Conservative MP Bob Zimmer said his farmer constituents have seen positives in the market since the end of the CWB monopoly Aug. 1.
Are NFU farmer members better off this year than last year?
“The prices are not determined entirely by single desk or no single desk or voluntary or otherwise,” said Boehm. “We have droughts that have created relatively buoyant prices, so for the moment farmers are getting high prices, but you can’t attribute that to marketing freedom or a voluntary board.”
Zimmer responded: “It’s been a good start, I must say.”
On Dec. 4, Western Barley Growers Association director and past president Brian Otto told MPs on the committee it was more than a good start.
He said deliveries are at a decade high level, elevators are moving crop quickly and railways and export terminals are turning deliveries around quickly.
“This is how a commercial marketplace should work and certainly creates an atmosphere that will attract investment into our industry.”
In his testimony, Boehm said his organization is dedicated to a farm model that differs from the large farm assumption of current policy.
“We believe that small-sized and medium-sized family farms should be the fundamental food producing units in Canada,” he told MPs. “Our mandate is to work for economic and social justice for those farmers.”
He said government policies on the CWB, the Canadian Grain Commission and the railways are returning the farm economy to a time when farmers had less power.
“All of these policies that we’re seeing are really shifting the clock back without actually looking at the entire public good, (without) economic cost-benefit analysis taking place,” he said.
