CALGARY – The Canadian Wheat Board last week helped organize a conference designed to promote the idea that it is interested in encouraging grain processing industries in Canada.
Along the way, some speakers from industry suggested the wheat board is as much a part of the problem as the solution.
Wheat board controls are not “a natural or logical process,” said Don Heasman, of Agri-Partners International Inc. His company is launching a wheat fractionation plant in Red Deer, Alta. to break grain into component parts to create the base for products as diverse as edible ingredients and ethanol.
Read Also
Agriculture ministers agree to AgriStability changes
federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
Heasman complained that efforts to build his plant have been made more difficult by the wheat board.
“It has been dampened and hampered by the wheat board domination of the industry.”
Others, including Art Froehlich of Westcan Malting Ltd., said the board is a responsible and helpful commercial partner.
The conference also offered shades of opinion between the extremes.
It began with wheat board chief commissioner Lorne Hehn insisting the board is as interested in promoting grain processing in Canada as it is in exporting unprocessed product.
“Processing wheat and barley at home is a priority for the CWB,” Hehn said at the start of the conference on grain value-adding on the Prairies. “We have developed a strategic approach to promote a competitive and secure environment in which the domestic industry is able to grow and prosper.”
It ended with former Saskatchewan premier Grant Devine challenging the wheat board to sell the value-adding message to farmers. It is better to process and create jobs at home than to export raw product and jobs abroad.
“Take that argument out to the country and say it is good, sell it at the farmgate,” Devine said to applause as the conference sponsored by the wheat board and Royal Bank wrapped up Nov. 4. “The truth is that the farmer will, the community will and the nation will do much better pushing it through domestic value-added.”
Adding value
Sandwiched between them, speakers promoted the potential of adding value to prairie grains through more malt production, flour milling, hog production, ethanol and wheat fractionation plants.
But Donald O’Connor, president of ethanol-producer Mohawk Products Ltd. of Minnedosa, Man., was one of those who raised the issue of wheat board control over marketing and pricing.
He noted the wheat board role in pricing grain at different levels for different uses.
“I don’t think free markets are supposed to work that way,” he said.
Through it all, wheat board officials insisted they are sensitive to the pricing, supply and competitive needs of domestic processing industries.
Earl Geddes, value-added program manager for the wheat board, said the board tries to price grain for malting or flour mills in a transparent, American-based system that will allow the industries to survive even if the board does not.
Ted Bilyea, president of Maple Leaf Foods International and chair of the federally appointed Canadian Agri-Foods Marketing Council, said the future growth of the Canadian food industry is at stake.
He said Canada’s share of world food trade has been declining. The answer is to increase processed food exports.
The council believes the country should aim for a four percent share of world food trade, which means doubling the value of exports to $40 billion within seven years.
But he also suggested marketing structures that isolate farmers from processors are a problem.
He praised the decision by prairie provincial governments to break the monopoly of hog marketing boards. It led his company, Maple Leaf Foods, to announce a major expansion in pork processing.
The same could work in the cereals sector, said Bilyea, although he refused to directly criticize the wheat board.
