Re: Oct. 20 Western Producer headline, “Barley expected to make comeback.” It is interesting that the National Cattle Feeders Association chair wants to blame the Canadian Wheat Board for low acres and low price.
Feed barley and feed wheat in Canada do not have to be sold through the CWB. It can be, and I have sold feed barley and wheat at a premium price through the CWB on many occasions.
Bill Jameson (chair of the National Cattle Feeders Association) also states that another reason for low barley acres and prices is that young farmers don’t want to deal with the CWB. If there is such a shortage of feed barley, then the open market should be paying a premium price, and the open market is not doing that, so don’t blame the CWB.
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As a matter of fact, most days the open market for barley has not changed in price and most days there are no bids. Go figure.
When farm groups like the cattle feeders association pushed to get rid of the Crow rate, they floated the idea that grain farmers would have real high feed grain prices. Some months there were hardly any bids for barley. When prices started to rise, feedlots and pig barns then imported cheap subsidized corn from the United States.
The end of the CWB’s monopoly will only mean more profits for multinational grain companies and that profit will come out of the pockets of western Canadian grain farmers.
(Prime minister Stephen) Harper and (agriculture minister Gerry) Ritz under the CWB Act are to give the farmer a fair vote on the future of the CWB monopoly. Why no fair vote? The federal and Saskatchewan governments know that the majority of farmers who market their wheat and barley through their marketing agency, the CWB, want the monopoly. So what the governments have done is no democratic vote (plebiscite) for farmers.
Is that democracy? Maybe in a third world country.
David Bailey,Saskatoon, Sask.
