CALGARY – Canadian wheat farmers aren’t the real bad guys in the ongoing battle over world wheat trade, says a senior official with the United States Department of Agriculture.
That dubious honour clearly belongs to the European Union, said Kirk Miller, general sales manager in the USDA’s foreign agriculture service.
But Miller makes no apologies for the lengthy series of wheat trade cases that the U.S. has launched against Canada and the Canadian Wheat Board over the past decade.
“I think it’s understandable that Canadian farmers may feel they’re being the target of unfair challenges,” Miller said in an interview after speaking to the annual convention of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association in Calgary. “But that’s an unfair characterization.”
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All of the trade challenges, he said, including the three now under way, have been prompted by sincere concerns by U.S. wheat growers about what they consider to be unfair competition from the board.
“Our main target is to go after the biggest offenders and the biggest offenders are not the Canadians,” he said.
“But we have very specific complaints against Canada.”
The U.S. commerce department recently imposed a 3.94 percent countervailing duty on imports of Canadian hard red spring and durum wheat, and is in the midst of an anti-dumping investigation against the CWB. Both cases were initiated by a North Dakota wheat growers organization.
The U.S. is also pursuing a case through the World Trade Organization’s dispute settlement process, alleging that the CWB engages in illegal and unfair trading practices and that Canada unfairly restricts access by U.S. farmers to the Canadian grain handling and transportation system.
Miller said one of the biggest problems is with the premiums that the board receives from wheat sales in high price markets to subsidize sales below market value in other markets.
“U.S. farmers are just incensed by that practice,” he told the wheat growers.
But CWB vice-president Earl Geddes, who was attending the convention, said that doesn’t happen.
“We don’t use those premiums to undercut another market,” he said.
“We pass them on to farmers.”
He said all grain merchants, whether the CWB or U.S. multinational traders, sell at different prices to different markets.
In his speech to the convention, Miller acknowledged that the U.S. is widely criticized by farmers in other countries for its rich subsidy payments, but said those criticisms are based on misunderstanding.
Contrary to popular belief, he said, U.S. domestic subsidies do not increase production, depress prices or violate WTO rules. Nor does the U.S. have significant export subsidies or engage in protectionism.
All of that was a little too much for at least one wheat grower in the crowd.
During a question period following Miller’s presentation, Dan Hochhausen, who farms at Strome, Alta., said all governments, including Canada and the U.S., are guilty of hypocrisy when it comes to trade.
He told Miller that as the world’s leading free enterprise country, the U.S. has an obligation to set an example for the rest of the world.
“If you say you’re a free trader, then act like it,” he said, adding that while he doesn’t support the CWB monopoly, the U.S. is “grasping at straws” in its efforts to block wheat imports from Canada.
