CWB envied
Farmers should be more businesslike. In the (Canadian) Wheat Board fight, farmers should consider what some of the world’s most powerful and successful grain industry players have to say about the CWB.
Richard Manning, author of Against the Grain, interviewed Dwayne Andreas, former CEO of Archer Daniels Midland. Andreas said: “You can’t have farming on a total laissez-faire system because the sellers are too weak and the buyers are too strong. … The free market is a myth, everybody knows that, just a few people say it. If you’re in a position like I am and do business all over the world, and if I’m not smart enough to know there’s no free market, I ought to be fired.”
Read Also
Agriculture needs to prepare for government spending cuts
As government makes necessary cuts to spending, what can be reduced or restructured in the budgets for agriculture?
Dick Dawson, retired senior vice-president of Cargill Ltd., said in the Winnipeg Free Press that farmers would be dumb to give up the CWB.
“We’re being forced to back out of a mould that’s worked bloody well. The overall score card would be a strong one (for the CWB),” said Dawson.
Farmers may or may not destroy the wheat board. But if they do, they should not pretend they’re doing so for sound free-market business reasons.
– L. C. O. Qualman,
Saskatoon, Sask.
Farmer’s behalf
Re: “Check policy,” (Open Forum, March 27) by Bev Currie.
This government has a bedrock principle: farmers first. We listen to farmers, work shoulder-to-shoulder with them and then deliver the results they need.
A letter to the editor in The Western Producer insinuated that the federal government is sending out mixed signals on its support for the Canadian Wheat Board and for supply management.
This could not be further from the truth and I want to correct the record since our government is taking care of these two separate issues for the benefit of producers.
This government is standing up for supply management both at home and abroad because we listen to farmers. The supply management system has worked for Canadian consumers and farmers for nearly 40 years. It has kept high quality, healthy foods available to Canadians at fair prices. Farmers chose supply management and this government continues to support them in that choice.
The government of Canada is delivering barley marketing freedom because we listen to farmers. Over 62 per cent of western Canadian barley farmers demanded market choice for their grain in a plebiscite last year and this government is delivering that freedom.
Our farmers can compete with anyone in the world and they are more than qualified to make their own marketing decisions. This government has tabled legislation to deliver marketing freedom and farmers are on board.
The government of Canada is acting on our farmers’ behalf. Whether it be standing up for supply management or tabling legislation to deliver freedom and flexibility to western barley growers, this government is working for Canadian farm families from coast to coast to coast.
– Gerry Ritz,
Minister of Agriculture
and Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board,
Ottawa, Ont.
Hog moratorium
Re: “Hog moratorium hits Hutterites hard,” (WP, March 13.)
There is more to this story than the moratorium. The cost of production, including cattle and grain, is not passed on.
Let me get this straight. The federal government is paying $225 per sow because of an oversupply and yet colonies want to expand?
A lot of proposed barns were put on hold before a temporary moratorium. High dollar, high feed prices were factors in producers’ expansion plans. With revenue from oil at record levels, the federal government should subsidize our farmers like the Americans are doing. This way there will be cheap feed for everyone.
The problem started with rapid expansion, and promises of a 13 to 20 percent return on investment.
Everyone made tremendous money from contractors, suppliers, government (taxation), truckers, workers, abattoirs and retailers. The producer now absorbs all losses. With the elimination of the Crow rate payment, there was the idea that good times would be ahead. Most of these payments were eaten up in transportation costs in the first year.
Karl Kynoch says it is cyclical. It isn’t with supply management. Should we dismantle supply management so everyone loses money? With 46 colonies strong, they can ask federal or provincial governments for grants on storage tanks like Maple Leaf did for their treatment plants. …
Haven’t you seen your neighbours’ husband and wife with off farm jobs? With the colonies’ labour pool, one could easily add additional income from an industry that is clamouring for workers. I’ve observed changes in the colonies from their work on Sundays, burning stubble and their use of computers, all in the name of efficiency. …
It is disheartening to see that my ancestors, five centuries previous, bartered their products and improved their standard of living, only to be taken away with wars and powerful magnates. What has changed since then? ÂÂ
– Chris Derbowka,
Dufrost, Man.
Roundup use
Increased biotech acres, not pesticide use, contribute to tight supply in the glyphosate market.
Mr. Darren Qualman is confused by the market conditions contributing to short supply and higher prices for glyphosate (“Market drives glyphosate prices: makers,” WP, March 20.) He implies that individual farmers have increased their use of glyphosate as a result of planting biotech crops and that is incorrect.
It is actually the increased acreage planted to Roundup Ready crops that is one of several contributing factors putting pressure on glyphosate supply, not increased pesticide applications by farmers.
While Monsanto will gladly take some credit for the 1.7 billion acres of biotech crops harvested in the past 12 years, it is the 12 million farmers who choose to use biotech crops because of the benefits they provide who have been the main drivers behind the overwhelming adoption rates in Canada and other world areas.
As Mr. Qualman knows, but apparently chooses to ignore, the adoption of biotech crops by farmers has contributed to a reduction in pesticide use worldwide and had also been a major contributor to the adoption of conservation tillage practices.
To be specific, adopters of biotech crops have reduced their pesticide applications by 289,000 metric tonnes and saved 1.8 billion litres of diesel fuel from reducing tillage or plowing.
– Trish Jordan,
Monsanto Canada,
Winnipeg, Man.
Bison greed
After reading all the articles in The Western Producer and other papers, one could really get the impression that things start looking rosy for the Canadian bison.
Finally the prices for the producers are climbing and the intensified marketing efforts seem to pay off. But booming times always attract the shady and unscrupulous so-called livestock traders into the business, driven by the greed for the quick dollars.
Unfortunately this is no different in the bison industry. Of course no producer is to blame for selling to the highest bidder for his animals. That’s free market.
The problem lies rather behind the scene. Less and less of our well-cared-for Canadian bison end up in our domestic value chain. Way too many are shipped to auction marts, collecting points and shippers yards only to wait for an horrific torture.
Animals used to roaming freely get confined in cattle liners and sent on senseless long trips to the U.S.
The modern abuse of buffalo has an ugly face. Big bucks pull thousands of live buffalo across the border, past all the struggling domestic processing plants.
Nobody knows how many never even make it to their final destination alive. The rest are dehydrated and bruised up, but who cares? They’re only slaughter animals anyway ….
This is just another sad example of selling out Canadian resources to greedy neighbours in return for quick cash. Truly a short sighted and non-sustainable choice, when money turns live creatures into a simple commodity.
Obviously some will never learn from the past. Let’s just hope these aggressive buyers in this tragedy buy some brains and a conscience with their quick dollars before the last bison is once again extinct from Canadian soil.
– Thomas Ackermann,
Ponoka, Alta.
Dilbert’s cubicle
After reading (federal agriculture minister Gerry) Ritz’s letter to the editor (Open Forum, Feb. 28) regarding biofuels, I became aware that Canadian farmers seemed contained within Dilbert’s cubicle and Mr. Ritz is the boss, a nightmare without doubt.
– Joel Wright,
Millet, Alta.
Gullible public
It was 10 p.m. on Wednesday March 10. I was watching the CBC National news. Saskatchewan had enjoyed a relatively balmy day as Ontario and Quebec were digging out of two feet of wet snow that was raising havoc with street cleaning crews in Ottawa.
Suddenly the news clip was focusing on a road grader that was making a futile attempt at clearing a snow-covered street in a residential area.
An ordinary road grader, much similar to what is used to maintain the thousands of grid roads that connect rural Saskatchewan. The operator had allowed too much snow to accumulate in front of the blade. The grader was spinning hopelessly.
According to CBC, the cause of the grader’s problems? Climate change.
I was shocked. For the last five years, the major networks have been predicting dry winters with no snow, global warming, melting ice caps and rising oceans. Without warning, this last winter has yielded below normal temperatures, above average snowfall that is typical of a Canadian winter.
Can anyone dispute that wet snow in March in most areas of Canada is as normal an occurrence as sunrise and sunset? Here in southwestern Saskatchewan, farmers would most likely sell their souls and vote Liberal if they could get two feet of the wet stuff to fill their dugouts and drown a few gophers.
Is the real problem climate change or is it the gullibility of the public? Opportunists are lining up three deep at the government trough with requests for “green cash” to carry out any number of unfounded and questionable projects that will allegedly correct any variations in weather patterns.
Who will fill the trough when it’s empty? If you’ve guessed the oil revenues of Alberta and Saskatchewan, give yourself a pat on the back. In government taxation circles, I believe they call that creating solutions to problems that haven’t yet occurred.
– John Hamon,
Gravelbourg, Sask.
News priorities
Front page news. Screaming headlines. These are the time honoured techniques that wake up the masses and encourage them to act. Put the important stuff where it’s easy to find.
Having always considered this to be an undeniable fact, I was surprised at what I found buried on page 19 of The Western Producer issue of Feb. 28.
“Farmers urged to fight CAIS errors,” read the headline. A tale of errors, possibly deceit and corruption unfolded, that has cost Canadian farmers millions of dollars in CAIS program underpayments.
Whether the Canadian government has replaced the old CAIS program with something better is irrelevant. It would have been the old program under which those farmers were paid; therefore, they are owed money, and were being urged to “fight CAIS errors.”
Should that not have been front page news?
More than a quarter of the front page of that same issue was dedicated to a picture and story about a farmer turning barbed wire into works of art.
Could it be I missed the point? Maybe farmers could make more money by turning out works of art, instead of growing crops. Please keep up the good work.
– Gerry Laughren,
Krydor, Sask.
Bad choices
Some of us have made bad choices in life and these choices affect us to this day. Similarly, our country and our world is feeling the effect of bad choices going back centuries.
The free world has fallen into the trap of accepting two political options. We can either vote for a right wing free enterprise government or a left wing socialist government, which supposedly protects the common man.
What we have failed to realize is that unbridled free enterprise has put the control of the world and its governments into the hands of a few elite.
Looming on the horizon is the energy non-crisis. Major international oil companies have been able to gain control of our oil resources and hold us hostage with the promise of giving us jobs and economic boom.
People may someday be freezing in their homes because they are unable to pay for the oil which is under their homes. Farmers and industry may have a difficult time surviving.
Where are the profits of these large oil companies going? Back to the shareholders? No. Back into exploration and development? No.
Major oil companies are spending most or all of their profits in buying back their own shares….
There are no simple solutions. For starters we must become more informed and stop falling for simplistic solutions such as thinking that free enterprise will solve all our problems.
– Laverne Isaac,
Medstead, Sask.
CWB mess
I have written previously to defend the Canadian Wheat Board and still support it. I still believe dual marketing is just a pretty name for open marketing and therefore all benefits of the CWB sole desk marketing are gone.
I could say that a proper debate and fair vote with a clear choice would have been nice, not the mess we had. We could have discussed things like what would happen under the open market if I was unable to supply my contracted malt barley.
Would I be liable to buy out the contract, as is now the case with my flax? Maybe a discussion on why barley producers in Alberta who don’t grow malt should have a vote that affects malt growers like me. All this is meaningless, though, as the debate has never been about facts or comparisons.
Some groups over the decades have had the goal of eliminating the CWB based on ideology only. They are finally getting their way and if not now, in the future when the Conservatives have a majority.
I believe the only reason the government had the concocted vote was because they didn’t have a majority. I would have liked a proper debate and vote, and if the majority wanted the open market, period, I could have accepted that, even if I don’t believe it is a good choice.
In the end though, what this debate has also shown is how much anger is directed at CWB supporters like me. Just to repeat what has been printed or said in the media, I am called a Communist Socialist and I am probably old and unable to learn new ways of marketing or too lazy to learn. I am not competent to market my own grain. I’m now dragging down the brightest and most capable farmers….
With comments being made like these, one has to wonder if those who make them would also like farmers like me to get out of the business altogether. It does seem that they think I’m holding them and the community back.
It does make me wonder why in the future I should care about what happens to the livestock industry or marketing boards. Should I care about anyone else who doesn’t happen to agree with my viewpoint?
In the past I may have not agreed with the ag ministers of the day but at least I felt they respected other viewpoints, unlike the current minister who appears to follow the “my way or the highway” viewpoint. …
– Donald J. Koenig,
Beatty, Sask.
Mind changed
I had coffee with an old buddy of mine the other day. Our conversation soon drifted onto this barley marketing thing. See, he is a member of one of these associations that has a handful of members and therefore they have the so-called authority to speak for all the barley producers.
Now this fellow was really dismayed.
He figured he’d been taken to the cleaners by the government on this barley thing.
Before he’d been pushing for the open market thing because the association and government were telling him it would be better prices if he could sell direct to the big companies or put it on his truck and dump her in the good old U.S.
Well, now he’s figuring old Harper’s just strumming his harp to the big companies’ tune.
When he couldn’t get that lumberjack from B.C. to get the job done, he figured he’d pull the strings to a different puppet and put an ostrich farmer from Saskatchewan in charge.
Well my buddy figures that the old Ritz cracker finally crumbled. Seems he blew his stack when the CWB, which he’s been ignoring all along, finally told him they weren’t interested in the open market and letting the grain companies and maltsters make all the money and not get the best value for farmers.
What really made him change his mind on the whole thing and figured the CWB was right, was when Ritz said that we need an open market so farmers, or the tin foil hat and decoder ring crowd, as he called them, will grow more barley and keep the price of it down for our feeding industry …
Yes sir, sometimes a dream is just an illusion and turns into a nightmare.
– Bryce Burnett,
Swift Current, Sask.
ABC plan
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, in a land known as Saskatchewan, there was a member of Parliament.
Despite producer objections, this MP insisted that he knew what was best for them.
He told them how he and his government were planning to end the Crow Rate benefit for all prairie producers.
At the next opportunity, the Saskatchewan electorate expressed their opinion and promptly issued Otto Lang his retirement package.
Hopefully, for agriculture minister Gerry Ritz and fellow MP David Anderson, history will repeat itself.
When discussing his government’s fixation on ending the Canadian Wheat Board’s monopoly, Ritz told the majority of producers who support the CWB to lead, follow or get out of the road.
This arrogance should be swiftly rewarded during the next election. Producers in his riding should work very diligently to see that he doesn’t get to top up his pension fund any further.
The Conservative Party has taken Saskatchewan voters for granted for way too long. Perhaps the time has come for that to change.
Danny Williams, the Conservative premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, said it best.
He was discussing how Stephen Harper and his Conservative government had reneged on a promise to Newfoundland and Saskatchewan on equalization, when he said, “Getting rid of this government is as simple as A-B-C. Voting (A)nything (B)ut (C)onserative.”
Ditto.
Thank you for that advice, Mr. Williams. I’m going to follow it!
– Berle L. Eberle,
Viceroy, Sask.
