Clear message
What a decisive victory. If a political party had been running in five byelections, won four and narrowly lost the fifth, they would be on the evening news commenting on their opponents’ crushing defeat and how a clear message was being sent.
Canadian Wheat Board director elections did exactly that for (federal agriculture minister Chuck) Strahl. Yes, producers are divided on this issue. Is there a single issue in our country where our citizens aren’t divided? Gay marriage, gun control, the environment and the granting of a province its nationhood come to mind.
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Because we are so divided, the Conservative party managed to win the last election with only 38 percent of the vote. Democracy rules and the majority does govern just the same.
Since farmer-elected directors took control of the board in 1998, there have been a lot of very positive changes. I like the board of today. It provides various pricing options, including a fixed price contract. I can use its website to do business with the CWB or access information on pricing, contracts, direct deposits, etc.
I like the orderly marketing system this board provides. No matter how far I live from an elevator or how big my farm is, I still have an opportunity to deliver my product.
The CWB uses the identity preserved program to promote our new varieties and then create demand for them in the world marketplace. They tender a portion of CWB business to grain companies and then return the savings to the pool accounts – $22.9 million last year. …
Our ag minister tells us we should give up the CWB for a “choice.” Strahl’s task force told him a dual marketing system won’t work. They recommended taking single desk selling away from the CWB and make it into a grain company. It appears that the choice he is offering to us will be Cargill, ConAgra, ADM, Agricore, Sask Pool and a little grain company called Chuck’s CWB. …
Western grain farmers did send a clear message to our minister of agriculture. I’ll paraphrase it for him. Butt out.
We don’t want to be manipulated by you or your government. Take your multinational grain buddies and, in the words of a former prime minister, fuddle duddle.
– Berle L. Eberle,
Viceroy, Sask.
Like concrete
The latest study, which confirms the fact that the CWB adds profit to barley growers, is only one of many studies, which always comes to the conclusion that the single desk marketing through the CWB puts more money in farmers pockets.
Other studies have shown that the CWB cannot survive if that monopoly is removed.
In spite of all these studies and no concrete evidence to the contrary, the proponents of dual marketing, Chuck Strahl and Stephen Harper are determined to get rid of the CWB. Their reasoning is “don’t confuse us with facts, our mind is made up.” It’s like concrete, all mixed up and permanently set.
The majority of western Canadian farmers support the CWB. It is ironic that of all the western Canadian Conservative MPs, who are supposedly representing the wishes of their constituents, only one had the courage to vote against a motion to curtail the CWB monopoly.
The rest choose to hide their heads in the sand and blindly follow the dictates of their leader. Their actions make a mockery of western democracy.
– John J. Capcara,
Saskatoon, Sask.
Invisible wall
For the crop years of 1917-18 and 1918-19 the federal government set up a body called the Board of Grain Supervisors and suspended wheat futures trading in Winnipeg. The BGS assumed complete control over purchasing, sales and pricing of wheat for export.
After the war, the federal government replaced the BGS with the CWB for one year, 1919. In 1920 the CWB was disbanded because the federal government felt it could not be justified in peacetime. The CWB act was enacted on July 5, 1935. This means that the CWB was established by the federal government three times and it appears to me that all three times it was to force the farmers to sell at less than market price.
Isn’t a monopoly generally illegal? What is the anti-combines legislation for? Could it be to protect the minority in a democratic country? I wonder if a real socialist does believe in democratic minority rights…
In Western Canada in 2007 we have a CWB designated area surrounded by an invisible wall. It is to keep farmers in and if they get out with some wheat, they are dealt with by the heavy hand of the law.
That wall will come down too. We will be free to market our grain by choice, free to fail and free to try again, and free to sell to the CWB if we choose.
Again I say, let’s get it right this time. Stand tall and firm, Mr. Strahl. We did vote for your government because you offered us the first real hope of being free from the CWB monopoly in about 90 years.
– Cliff Petersen,
Mazenod, Sask.
Rein them in
I am a grain producer in Saskatchewan and am very disappointed in the firing of Adrian Measner, president and CEO of the Canadian Wheat Board. I am writing to demand his reinstatement.
I don’t like the heavy-handed methods used to accomplish what the minister of agriculture set out to do. The recent CWB director elections have shown there is still support for the single desk. Four out of five elected directors are pro board candidates.
Let the people decide through a democratic vote, not a dictator style approach …
Why don’t you give the dairy, egg and poultry producers the option of selling outside their marketing boards? Maybe some of them want “choice” too. Or a new producer may want to produce some supply-managed commodity outside the marketing board. Try it with Quebec’s dairy industry.
Why has the CWB been singled out for this free choice approach?
In Western Canada I see the CWB as our only source of power in dealing with the multinational grain companies and railways. If the CWB is diminished to competing with the grain companies, who is going to handle the board grain and at what cost? The board will become unviable.
Also, it won’t be farmers marketing their own grain anyway, it will be the grain companies standing between producers and the buyers extracting as much as they can.
The CWB has seen the writing on the wall and has made major changes. It has developed many options to market grain through them. …
Mr. Harper, I suggest you heed the warnings and rein in the two renegade MPs, agriculture minister Chuck Strahl and David Anderson, parliamentary secretary to the minister of agriculture.
Now would be a good time to exercise your leadership and put an end to the production the puppet and puppeteer are putting on, because the majority of western Canadian grain producers are not enjoying the show.
– Tim Wittman,
Vibank, Sask.
Cattle marketing
It is interesting to see that some in the cattle industry are trying to adopt some of the marketing strategy that some in the grain industry are trying to get rid of.
I am referring to using a single desk to try and gain an advantage in the marketplace.
A voluntary single desk called Consolidated Beef Producers was first started in the United States and is apparently successful down there.
Now some Alberta cattle feeders have apparently come to the same conclusion as their American cousins. It seems the major packing houses have become so overpowering in the marketplace that they are not giving said feeders equal chance and fair pricing to move their livestock in an orderly and profitable fashion.
Now we see a dozen or more feedlots contracting with an Alberta version of Consolidated Beef to put pressure on the packing industry to compete fairly for their cattle and receive them in a more orderly fashion.
I wonder how long it will work without government legislation?
Check out www.agcanada.com/custompages/stories_story.aspx?mid=31&id=987 or do an internet search for Canada Consolidated Beef Producers.
– Roger Buxton,
Millet, Alta.
Rights denied
We are living in an era of rights. Everyone supposedly has rights. Lesbians have rights, homosexuals have rights, women have the right to kill their babies, RCMP have the right to wear turbans.
Everyone has rights except farmers. The producers who grow the food to feed the country don’t have rights, only in Western Canada, the designated area.
Farmers in Western Canada do not have the same rights as their counterparts in Eastern Canada, the right to sell their product to the highest bidder.
The socialist left wing philosophy in Canada argues for a vote on the Canadian Wheat Board and the monopoly. The socialist left-wingers call that democracy. Where is the democracy in a monopoly? You have no rights ….
Wake up, Canada. The Communist Party of Canada supports the CWB and the monopoly.
Allowing a majority to deny what should be rights to a minority is not democracy. It’s the tyranny of the majority.
It was wrong when the majority of Canadian voters, all men, denied women the right to vote.
It was also wrong when a majority of American voters were in favour of buying and selling slaves.
The CWB argument that they cannot compete? They are incompetent by their own admission. This is amazing and probably the only business in the world who has ever pleaded incompetence to retain their position.
– Art Mainil,
Benson, Sask.
Vote for choice
I am writing to encourage producers to vote for choice in the barley plebiscite. A competitive CWB will be a much stronger organization than what it is now.
Numerous trade and market analysts have been suggesting that we should reduce our reliance on the export of raw commodities. Positive economic outcomes are not in the sale of unprocessed commodities, but on adding value to these products.
Richard Grey and associates’ recent article in the Western Producer (Dec. 7) totally lacks vision on their economic analysis. It is difficult to understand why our college agriculture professors are so rooted in the past they cannot see the dramatic and positive signals of the future.
It is beyond me why the CWB, Grey and associates hang on to the status quo when the CWB grains are yielding negative farmgate returns. They must be going on the theory that if a lie is told often enough, people will believe it….
I think the CWB will be stronger by being competitive. The system we have been using for the past 63 years isn’t working. This is our chance to capitalize on numerous opportunities.
A vote for choice in marketing our barley is one of the most positive steps we as producers can make for the future of agriculture. It will be a win, win situation no matter what side of the debate you may be on.
– Charles Anderson,
Rose Valley, Sask.
Quotes & context
In a recent issue, Barb Glen wrote of quotes and said, “accurate quotes are integral to good reporting.” (WP, Jan. 4.)
And so is integrity. You see, an accurate quote is meaningless if one does not know what was said before or after it. In isolation a quote can be completely out of context, yet some working in the various media continue to use this device as an integral part of their reporting, regardless of the harm it does.
Journalists as a body know of this, yet seem unable to stop the practitioners. I suspect it is because change must come from the top downwards, from the publisher/owner. And that just ain’t goin’ to happen.
– Dick Barnes,
Adams Lake, B.C.
Recruit tonnage
I would like to clarify the story, “Fundraising extended for farmer-owned terminal” in your Jan. 11 issue.
Mr. Ewins’s outstanding journalism may have suffered from an inexact subject to interview. I am unable to be entirely frank in responding to some questions, purely due to legal obligations that prevent such frankness.
In the course of the interview, my intent was, and continues to be, to emphasize not any “fund-raising” aspect, but rather the recruitment of tonnage. The key for real success will be measured in how many tonnes of grain can be put through the new system on behalf of the specific farmers who grow those tonnes.
The concern is not about whether money can be raised and that is not an issue in the pre-sale of memberships. Raising money really has nothing to do with it at all. It is about whether or not we can have memberships that reflect specific farmers tied directly to specific crops so that benefits flow back to those specific farmers.
The point about being forced to a “drop-dead point” is that at some point we will have to decide we have all the farmer members we are going to get and if that membership does not represent sufficient tonnage to generate the highest possible rebates to farmers, we will seek outside arrangements to guarantee the additional tonnage. That will clearly mean that benefits will flow to non-farmers or at best to organizations with farmers once removed.
For our mission and the unanimous vote of our producer board, such an eventuality would be a failure …. The whole point of the exercise is to return dollars to farmers….
But if the moment comes and we have only 1,000 members in the new organization, then we will indeed move forward with those 1,000 and make whatever arrangements are required to maximize their benefits into the future.
– Glenn Caleval,
Vice-President, FNA,
Saskatoon, Sask.
