Subsidized corn
I would like to point out an error in the article titled “Cheap U.S. corn entices cattle producers” in the Aug. 16 issue of The Western Producer.
The corn that is being imported into Western Canada is not cheap, it is subsidized. The American farmers that produced this corn last year participated in U.S. treasury payouts of $28.8 billion US, an all-time high.
Under one program, the Loan Deficiency Payment program, these producers were paid an additional 45 cents Cdn for each bushel of their corn. I wonder if these American corn growers would be shipping “cheap” corn without the substantial backing of the U.S. treasury?
Read Also
Crop insurance’s ability to help producers has its limitations
Farmers enrolled in crop insurance can do just as well financially when they have a horrible crop or no crop at all, compared to when they have a below average crop
I also have an issue with Mr. Carpenter’s comment about locking the bins up and turning the screws on the feeders.
Who was turning the screws back when the buzz words were glut, oversupply and that’s supply and demand for you?
Well, today the words supply and demand are still here but there are a couple of new ones – drought and short supply. Does it mean the feed grain producers should take less than market value for their product just to please the feeders?
In closing, I would like to point out that if this subsidized corn was to enter the United States of America, the self-proclaimed bastion of free markets, it would be called dumping and the subsidy portion would be dealt with quickly and severely.
But Mr. Carpenter and the livestock feeding sector are lucky. After all, this is Canada, and only in agriculture where ideas like free markets, free trade, supply and demand and so on are only ideas of convenience.
– Eric Nielsen,
Hussar, Alta.
Eat a plane?
I read somewhere that the federal agriculture minister stated that there will be no help from the federal government as they have already given farmers $12 billion in the last 15 years.
How much have they given to Bombardier in the same time period? Has anyone tried eating an airplane?
– Becky Gingrich,
Princeton, Ont.
$5 beer
We all watched the terrorist attack and collapse of the World Trade Center towers. And we witnessed the loss of thousands of innocent lives.
With the dawn of such atrocities, we have lost our security and innocence. This has left us with the question of why.
What can make someone so angry and filled with hate? What can make them believe that the only way that they can make their lives count is to die and in so doing kill and destroy those who they believe are responsible for their families’ wretched circumstances?
While listening to the coverage of the Trade Center attack I happened to listen to an interview with a man, a banker or trader. At the end the reporter said the young man stared into his beer as if the answer of why this attack happen could be found there.
After a minute we can see it. The answer is there. It is his beer, that very beer which can cost $5 in New York.
That beer, which is made from barley, which is a major crop of the Third World.
The crop that the people cannot afford to grow at the price that we have driven it down to the point there is no money for schools, for houses, for clothing. They are destitute. They cannot even find the resources to put water on their remaining crops.
There is nothing. It is all gone, and what is left is hunger, desperation, anger and idle hands.
We, the farmers of the first world, grow barley of which $5 worth will make 660 beers, which goes for $3,300 in New York.
We have lowered the price of barley by overproducing.
We, as farmers of the first world, now need only $5 to pay for this barley that made this beer. We sell this barley everywhere in the Third World.
The Third World farmers cannot compete, which in turn makes them destitute and desperate.
What do we do to help?
We give them food and in so doing we lower the price of their home-grown food well below the cost of production.
We cannot stand blameless and we do not hold the answers. The only thing we can do is point out the problem and promote fairness and honesty, strength and compassion and pray that God helps us all.
– Robert George,
Rush Lake, Sask.
Thanks, WP
I would like … to thank The Western Producer for several outstanding articles that they have done on the shooting sports over this summer. It is very refreshing to see a written format that has a positive word to say about the people involved with firearms ownership. There is too much written word in large urban newspapers condemning the legitimate existence of any of the shooting sports.
I myself have been involved with the activities covered in the articles and I can’t think of more deserving people. But unfortunately there are certain elements who would like to see anything involving firearm related ownership and use completely terminated in this country.
So I would like to say thanks again to The Western Producer for covering our side of the story.
– Russ Christopher,
Taylor, B.C.
Grain fiction
The best thing The Western Producer can do for farmers is to stop repeating the fiction that there is an oversupply of grain. All data points to the opposite conclusion.
Stocks-to-use ratios are the most quoted measure of supply and demand. World wheat stocks-to-use ratios are at a 29-year low. World wheat consumption has exceeded production in 10 of the past 15 years.
Most years, we are eating more than we are growing. The picture is the same for world total grains: stocks-to-use ratios are at a 21-year low and stocks are falling rapidly.
This does not seem like oversupply.
In Ed White’s article “U.S. farmers end up with large crop,” (WP, Sept. 20), he notes that despite the “large crop” in the U.S., “prices did not plummet as most people expected.”
Did Ed White look at the data table at the top of his article? That table listed world wheat ending stocks in 1999-00 at 168 million tonnes, 2000-01 ending stocks at 158 million tonnes, and 2001-02 ending stocks at 134 million tonnes – a 20 percent drop in two years. Ending stocks for corn and soybeans declined similarly and U.S. stocks declined at the same rate as world stocks.
Grain prices did not “plummet” because demand is exceeding supply and stocks are falling rapidly as a rising population eats more grain.
Every year, the world has a record population. Just to keep up, farmers need to produce a record crop. Farmers are falling behind in this task. But defective markets are still punishing farmers for producing “too much” grain.
Those who continue to claim that there is oversupply resort to circular logic. They claim that prices are low because of oversupply. Then, as evidence of oversupply, they point to low prices.
There is no evidence of oversupply, no economic reason for current low prices, and no reason to expect prices to plummet in a year when consumption exceeds production: demand exceeds supply. The challenge for farmers and for The Western Producer is to move beyond outdated superstitions about the “invisible hand of the market” and prices set by supply and demand.
The challenge is to honestly grapple with the new reality of agricultural markets grossly distorted by the market power of huge agribusiness transnationals.
Please help farmers in these tasks. False reports of oversupply only hinder us.
– Darrin Qualman,
National Farmers Union,
Saskatoon, Sask.
