When Murray Fulton gave his first presentation on new generation co-ops back in 1995, people were already questioning how the Canadian Wheat Board was going to handle these groups.
Even now, a few weeks after the board announced a policy on new generation co-ops, Fulton believes the agency isn’t done wrestling with this sticky issue.
“My own sense is this will evolve over time. These things are rarely cut and dried and decided once and for all,” said the director of the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives.
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The board’s new policy was prompted by Prairie Pasta Producers, which has been lobbying the CWB for an exemption from its domestic human consumption price. That would encourage the group to build a $120 million pasta plant and mill in Western Canada.
“I think it’s fairly clear that if they had given an exemption to the co-op that they would have ultimately had to give some kind of exemption then to in fact all of their North American customers,” said Fulton.
Otherwise there would have been some serious trade implications that may have led to anti-dumping charges from millers south of the border, said Fulton.
Aside from pragmatic trade-related issues, the board also faced a serious philosophical decision in creating this new policy. Fulton believes supporters of price pooling were the clear victors in this case, but he thinks the battle is far from over because the decision could potentially block farmer-owned, value-added activity on the Prairies.
He believes some compromise between a complete DHC exemption and no DHC exemption for farmer-owned milling facilities could be forged over the years.
The decision has left Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association president Kevin Archibald “bitterly disappointed” that farmers weren’t given the “ability to move up that value chain.”
By “maintaining the status quo” the board has taken away the opportunity for prairie producers to improve their lot in life, he said.
National Farmers Union co-ordinator Stewart Wells sees it as a “fair and prudent decision.”
“We think it’s unwise to have a few farmers cherry picking the Canadian market and having other farmers being forced to take less for their grain.”
