Letters to the editor

Carbon offsets

As the largest aggregator of offset emissions in Alberta, we read with interest your recent article (WP, May 10) on the emerging offset system created on July 1 of this year by the Alberta government’s climate change bill 3.

To date, we have over 700 farmers enrolled in our program and a number of corporations, who have been defined as regulated emitters under the new legislation, have approached us to negotiate a sale of farmers’ aggregated offset credits within the next few months.

There is no confusion in our program since we are the only aggregator in Canada that has our protocols audited and approved by an independent third party auditor as required under the regulations in the new act. Our approval statement is available upon request.

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Producers face the reality of shifting grain price expectations

Significant price shifts have occurred in various grains as compared to what was expected at the beginning of the calendar year. Crop insurance prices can be used as a base for the changes.

We have recommended to the Alberta government that they adopt an interim registry operated by the Canadian Standards Association while they set theirs up and they have agreed and this is in place now. Just visit the CSA website.

Unlike other aggregators who are just beginning to develop their programs and are trying to learn the rules to operate in Alberta, we are from Alberta and have been designing our program over the last seven years.

We are pioneers in this business and offer the most comprehensive commercial climate change program that is designed to gather offsets produced by Alberta’s rural community and register and certify those offsets for sale to the buyers requiring them for compliance purposes under the new legislation.

We will be participating with the government in the farmer/producer workshops and continue to work with them on developing an aggregators code of best practices to ensure ethical standards are developed and maintained for this new value added revenue opportunity for the Alberta farming community.

– Robert Coulter,

VP Marketing,

Emission Credits Corporation,

Didsbury, Alta.

Keep CWB

The issue of barley marketing should be a non-issue. Our anti-wheat board minister and his assistant have used their power to try and destroy what was working well and run by democratically elected farmer directors.

I know of 400 signatures on a petition from our town and area asking that the CWB be left alone. I attended the meeting at the Bessborough last July 27 in support of the CWB.

Over 200 people cared enough to leave their work, pay their own expenses and attend this meeting. We never hear from our MPs about any of these people.

How many petitions have been sent in from all over Western Canada? I guess none of us matter.

Thank you to the Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board, the National Farmers Union, the governments of Saskatchewan and Manitoba and all the individuals listed in the court case trying to stop the destruction of the wheat board.

– Lorne Peek,

Hanley, Sask.

Think it through

… Recently, I identified the potential loss of Churchill as a port if the CWB loses its single desk. The CWB is the largest, and often only, shipper through the port.

A farmer challenged me on the point because I did not provide numbers.

Well, the numbers are as follows: prior to 2000, 100 percent of the grain shipped was CWB grain. From 2000 to the present approximately 86 percent of the grain shipped from Churchill has been CWB grain. These facts will not deter the detractors, though.

Most farmers understand they are not getting a fair return for their work and effort.

Some blame the CWB, of course, but are unwilling to do any analysis, other than listen to these detractors whose interests are served by blaming the CWB.

Of course, the CWB is not perfect but it is the last organization on the Prairies which farmers largely control. Its future should be in farmers’ hands.

If choice is the answer to farmers’ problems, one must ask why grain companies, processors, machinery and fuel dealers are amalgamating and reducing choices. If choice provides better returns, then virtually every other business sector is heading in the wrong direction, many of them chalking up record profits as they stumble along.

CWB detractors would have us believe that farmers will be more successful by taking on the world grain trade as individuals while the grain companies become larger and fewer.

The facts to support that argument don’t exist.

I wonder if “choice” is going to provide the same kind of “benefits” that privatization of the pools, the loss of the Crow and the two-price wheat system provided to farmers. Farmers need to think this carefully through and ask detractors what the benefits really are and who benefits.

– Kyle Korneychuk,

Pelly, Sask.

About GrainVision

(A July 26) letter to the editor, signed by CWB director Allan Oberg, invited a response and requires clarification.

The CWB questioned the membership of GrainVision. First, we represent thousands of wheat and barley producers; farmers who are voluntary members of associations who are looking to reform Canada’s grain marketing system.

Contrast this to the CWB, which compels participation and then uses millions of dollars from all farmers to protect a system many don’t want.

The CWB communication department has criticized agri-business in its support of GrainVision. I will not hide from broad support across the value chain.

Bringing the entire industry together and creating a common vision for itself is the only way we will compete with highly competitive, low cost, international producers.

As has been the case for years, the CWB is using spin to try and ferment conflict within the Canadian industry. This outdated antagonistic view is one of the reasons why investment and growth is occurring elsewhere.

GrainVision was formed to create a new, collaborative development path.

It is my hope that the CWB will one day see this, and become part of the vision as well.

GrainVision membership is open to anyone who shares the goal of increased profitability and competitiveness for our industry.

The CWB has tried to spin the recommendations from the CWB task force. They have tried to say that the task force did not recommend reform until 2008.

As a member of the task force, let me clarify. The task force recommended a voluntary CWB for both wheat and barley beginning in 2008.

If the CWB is endorsing this recommendation, the industry is ready to make it work.

The truth is that the creation of voluntary marketing for barley on Aug. 1 (would have) only partly implemented the task force’s recommendations.

By trying to turn its recommendation into support for the preservation of the monopoly, the CWB communications department is twisting the report of the task force they refused to participate in.

– Paul Orsak,

Chair, GrainVision,

Binscarth, Man.

Good news

On July 31, a federal judge ruled that even Stephen Harper’s government must follow the law.

The judge ruled that Harper and (federal) agriculture minister (Chuck) Strahl could not go behind closed cabinet doors and take the Canadian Wheat Board away from farmers.

If Harper and his cronies want to take the revenue that now goes directly to farmers from CWB export and domestic human consumption barley sales and give it to the private trade, they will have to bring a bill before Parliament to do so.

This is good news for those of us who farm and support the CWB and even better news for those who support a transparent and fair democracy. I wonder if Harper and Strahl will get it?

– Ken Larsen,

Benalto, Alta.

Check survey

In his recent letter to The Western Producer (Open Forum, July 12), agriculture minister Chuck Strahl comments that the results of the CWB’s 2006-07 producer survey show grain producers clearly want changes to how barley is marketed and that this supports his government’s efforts to eliminate the CWB’s single desk.

But before jumping to this conclusion, the CWB would respectfully submit to the minister that there would be benefit in leafing through the entire survey.

It would allow for a better understanding of where farmers really stand on the issue of the CWB’s mandate as a single-desk agent for prairie grain.

For example, he would see that:

69 percent of farmers surveyed said they support the CWB.
59 percent strongly or somewhat agree with the statement “I am against anything that would weaken the CWB.”
60 percent said the government must ensure the CWB remains strong and viable if it moves to open up the barley market, with only 33 percent saying that the government should completely open up the market no matter what the consequences for the CWB.
66 percent agreed that creating a so-called dual market for wheat will eventually result in the end of the CWB.
66 percent said the views of the CWB are close to their own.
42 percent said the views of the federal government were close to their own.
90 percent agreed that any decision to end the CWB single desk must be made by farmers and not by the federal government.

It is clear from this data that grain producers do want changes but not at any expense.

They want changes that are farmer-driven, not government-imposed, that maintain the strengths of the CWB, that enable the CWB to continue to serve as their advocate on many issues, including transportation, as it did on the recent level of service complaint by Great Northern Grain.

And they want the final say in all important changes to the CWB’s single desk.

The CWB has offered to meet with the minister and his staff to go over the survey results and to use them as a starting point for in-depth and meaningful discussions on the best way to serve prairie grain producers’ needs.

The interest that he is showing in the results hopefully means that a favourable response to our invitation is imminent.

– Ken Ritter,

Chair, CWB Board of Directors,

Kindersley, Sask.

Defending wishes

The insolence and hypocrisy of politicians never cease to amaze me. Case in point, last week’s response from David Anderson (MP for Cypress Hills-Grasslands and Parliamentary Secretary for the Canadian Wheat Board to the Minister of Agriculture ) to a recent communication release by Ken Ritter, chair, CWB board of directors.

Anderson accused Mr. Ritter and wheat board supporters of being “driven by ideology….”

Excuse me, but as a politician Mr. Anderson, everything you choose or don’t choose to do is ultimately governed and driven by your particular ideology.

For example, your unequivocal opposition to the CWB and years of efforts to discredit and dismantle it.

Anderson also accused the wheat board and its friends of forgetting to mention all the facts regarding a potential $40 million loss if the wheat board loses its barley monopoly.

And this from someone who, along with his political cronies, somehow neglected to mention to the people ofÂ Saskatchewan that the promised $800 million annually in new equalization money really carried unstated caveats.

And because of what you would like us to believe was just a minor oversight, we weren’t informed that the $800 million was actually going to be some $560 million less than promised. …

By coincidence, I recently happened to visit some relatives who are very large grain and oilseed producers.

In addition, they also raise a large herd of their own cattle while custom feeding for others.

When I asked them how much the recent increase in the price for barley could be attributed to the apparently impending removal of barley sales from the wheat board, they were surprisingly frank and emphatic in their reply of, “absolutely nothing.”

Instead, they said the improved price for barley was due solely to increased demand due to the budding ethanol industry.

Funny thing, but increased freedom was not mentioned in any regard to barley price, production or seeding decisions.

Given last fall’s vote on whether to remove barley from the wheat board, it would seem that Mr. Ritter, the board and the Friends of the CWB are actually defending the stated wishes of the majority ofÂ Saskatchewan producers, something Mr. Anderson has failed to do at every turn when it comes to the matter of the CWB and the wishes ofÂ Saskatchewan producers for it.

– Robert Neufeld,

Waldeck, Sask.

Where’s money?

I never write letters or complain too much but the Canadian Wheat Board’s recent moves are just too much.

What is going on with the fixed prices being offered right now? Last year on July 12, my local price was $5.18 with the Minneapolis December futures price of $5.93 Cdn per bushel.

On July 26 of this year my fixed was $5.28 yet the December 2007 futures are $6.88. I get an extra 10 cents yet the futures are 95 cents higher. The board has changed the basis to keep the fixed price down.

World prices are rising, yet once again we do not see the benefit. Obviously the board has sold a large portion of my wheat at far less than what it is worth.

Oh, I forgot, they say they get more than the world price for my wheat so I ask, where is my money?

– Rick Bergseth,

Sedgewick, Alta

Excess organic

My goodness, do you pay your reporters by the number of times they use the word “organic” in a farm food story?

The dairy story from Picture Butte (WP, July 26) went on and on about organic this and organic that.

I hope the cattle stand on organic concrete and the organic straw is spread with an organic pitchfork.

Oh yes, and I hope the guy uses organic soap to wash his hands and puts the milk into organic plastic bottles with an organic hose.

Funny though, the picture didn’t show the guy with a hair net, which I recall everyone in the dairy processing business is always pictured wearing.