The (Canadian) Wheat Board has noticed that 30 percent of the Prairies is not able to be seeded. Now they show a little concern. The question is, what are they going to do? Their track record here from the past is not very good.
Back in 2002, we had a big drought and about this time of year, the wheat board announced that they were out of the wheat exporting business for the year. …
Without the supply of cheap wheat from the wheat board, the price of wheat in the world moved up. Did the wheat board go into the market and try and fix a future high price for the farmers? They did not.
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Were there any layoffs due to lack of business? Nope, they just sat on their hands. The only time they moved was to reach out and take their pay-cheque.
What did they do for one year? I don’t know but in the fall when we went to deliver what little wheat we had, guess what? The elevators were full to the lids with wheat, no shipping orders.
Did any of the elevator staff get laid off? Not that I know of. The only ones suffering here were the farmers who had none or very little wheat to sell and paid salaries out of the pool accounts to people who were not working.
How did the elevator companies make out? Well, the wheat board pays storage on grain in the elevator. The money comes from the farmers’ pool accounts.
Contrary to what some people would have you believe, the wheat board has no money. The only money they have is farmers’ money. The wheat board took farmers’ money and paid the elevator companies for grain storage.
If you want to know how much money the elevator companies got, find out how much they get paid for storage per bushel (and) multiply by the size of elevator. You will see they did not suffer. The figure will knock your socks off. I hope we are not in for a repeat scenario.
