Flex options
The Canadian Wheat Board says, in response to my statement that the FlexPro contract is a case of tinkering with what are already overly complex pricing programs, that they are “improving the producer payment options on an ongoing basis as we find out what works and what doesn’t,” (WP June 5.)
Who and what do they want these programs to work for, I wonder?
What works for farmers is achieving the highest possible price for the crop. Under the daily price contract, which FlexPro replaces, we priced some No. 1, 13.5 percent wheat for our clients last winter at $650 per tonne in-store, almost double the 2007-08 pool return outlook. That can’t have worked very well for the CWB, but it worked for us and the farmers who hire us to maximize returns from marketing.
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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
Maureen Fitzhenry also said it’s absolutely untrue that the PPO are politically motivated. I may have misstated my point in suggesting that they are, and should clarify what my impression is. The PPO programs seem to respond to the results of the expansive polls and surveys of farmers that the CWB commissions, rather than to the real-life, hands-on experience of a producer in Western Canada trying to achieve the highest value for their crop. …
These programs are overly complex because they are only being developed to address criticism of the board’s sales performance, not to reflect true market signals back to farmers, which is why they have failed in quieting detractors. … I can’t help but chuckle at claims FlexPro is better than the DPC because it has no tonnage limit. Guess what? A tonnage limit wouldn’t be a problem here.
There’s little hope of an attractive price being available through this contract, yet there are new risks to deal with and no added transparency. I’m not trying to be unnecessarily critical, this is simply not something farmers need in their marketing toolbox.
– Brenda Tjaden Lepp,
Co-founder and Chief Analyst,
FarmLink Marketing Solutions,
Winnipeg, Man.
Biocarbon storage
Food and fibre based biofuels will be replaced very soon.
Extremely efficient biofuel production methods are very close. These methods will be used to replace food and fibre based methods. Non carbon based fuels are also imminent.
But the main contribution biofuel research will make for our health, environment and climate will be if that research develops a better way to capture carbon from our atmosphere and then store that carbon away from our atmosphere, not just recycle the carbon back into our atmosphere as all biofuels do.
Biofuel technologies would then be called BioCarbon Storage (BCS), like nature’s trees.
If the experimental stage microbes and synthetic cells require concentrated CO2 to produce BCS materials, as some do, then the only question is, “which is more easily stored away from our atmosphere, the already concentrated CO2 or the biocarbon material?”
If the research can evolve microbes and synthetic cells that can pluck CO2 right out of the atmosphere like plants do, with no need for prior concentration of CO2, then we have the giant BCS leap our Earth desperately needs.
This would help reverse our accelerating destruction of nature and natural processes.
Current large scale food based biofuel production is stone age technology, relatively, which only the dangerously motivated and dangerously uninformed promote. The primary contribution farm research and farmers will make will be for healthy food.
– Joel Wright,
Millet, Alta.
Ag aid
Now that Stephen Harper has apologized for the harm done to Aboriginal children in the past, let’s hope that his government will begin to recognize the ongoing suffering of the world’s poorest children.
Despite promising to raise Canada’s foreign aid levels to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development average, under Harper our overall aid has steadily declined….
Meanwhile, the World Bank warns that unless the international community takes action, the number of people living on $1 a day could double, and in many countries the soaring food prices are already pushing the people to the brink of starvation.
As a first step, Canada could meet its promise to spend $500 million per year on agricultural aid, targeted towards small-scale farmers and increasing regional food security.
This would help to reverse Canada’s shameful overall decline in foreign aid, something we may be apologizing for in the future.
– Sonia Furstenau,
Victoria, B.C.
Massive transfer
I read your article (WP, May 15) about the Crow demise. The book To Kill the Crow by John Gallagher shows that in 1982 when the Crow freight rate was in effect, the National Farmers Union did an assessment of the amount of money that would be drained from communities and cities because of the loss of revenue by farmers’ spending ability within the community.
It was projected to 1990 when the full effect of freight rate increases would be in effect. Saskatchewan’s annual loss as of 1990 would be $275 million ….
This Crow demise was initiated by the Conservative government and followed through by the Liberal government with influence by the same advisers. …
This loss does not take into account the loss of employment by the resulting closure of grain elevators, rail line abandonment, farm equipment dealership closures, loss of tax revenue from these businesses and loss of populations to other provinces.
If we had not allowed the demise of the Crow and the associated deregulation of other associated infrastructures pertinent to rural Canada, we would have retained a booming rural economy equal to or greater than the present oil industry in Alberta …
This shift of wealth should have provoked a protest from rural and city folks. Instead, they were led to believe they would benefit from the demise of the Crow that has recently proven to be untrue.
Now we have the same influence to get rid of the Canadian Wheat Board.
What will the effect of the CWB loss be on each community in rural and urban Canada? Will it be another massive transfer of wealth from citizens to the multi-nationals?
– R. E. Kennedy,
Simpson, Sask.
Windbreak threat
Well, here we go again. It is some years since we landowners here had to form an alliance to fight our own power company when we finally learned that a huge power line was to be built east-west to supply power to the heavy oil upgrader near Lloydminster.
Oh, the company did put on a “show and tell” in Waseca Hall where we could walk around looking at their plans and listen to them talk. The plan had a huge jog in it to avoid “a proposed, possible golf course.”
The plan did not, however, avoid farmsteads or miles and miles of windbreak which were to be destroyed. Right here we are on a height of land at the mercy of the wind.
To make a long story short, we made them keep the line away from the farmsteads, although some land has the poles in the way of machinery, and with no yearly rent. We also saved the windbreaks, or so we thought.
(On June 5) we learned that in two weeks time, in bird nesting season, Sask Power intended to arrogantly enter our lands and destroy all those miles and miles of windbreak, both natural and planted.
They claim they will replace the trees with saskatoons and lilacs. Oh, how cute: shrubs. And how much wind will these shrubs stop?
The thought occurs to me: what if I found out the location of the favourite golf courses or beaches of the head of the big oil companies and drove 100 head of cattle across them. Does the minister responsible for Sask Power golf?
Of course, I’d be arrested. After all, I’m not an oil company or a power company, and there is the operative word: power. And we must remember, we aren’t as important as “a possible proposed golf course.”
We have lost everything unique or beautiful, and areas historic to the heavy oil industry. We live in choking dust and uglification but we are supposed to keep quiet because of the money. It’s greed and arrogance and indifference hiding under the name of progress….
– C. Pike,
Waseca, Sask.
Market power
At Gary Breutkreuz’s (Yorkton-Melville MP) ag forum in Yorkton, (federal agriculture minister Gerry) Ritz was asked by farmers what his government was going to do about high input prices. He was also asked why inputs, especially fertilizer, are generally cheaper in the United States.
The ever flamboyant Ritz had a quick answer, perhaps without thinking it through. He loudly stated that farmers need to form large buying groups, form large co-ops to achieve market power.
He even went on to state one of his friends in the input industry stated to him that he would sell his products cheaper if only farmers would get together and place larger orders.
So why is it then that farmers who want to create and keep their market power in marketing grain, through the CWB, have to fight Ritz every step of the way?
Ritz’s statements clearly show he knows the strength of the farmers working together and the real benefits. But he also knows what the prime minister and the grain trade wants.
So rather than deal with the issue of high inputs, poor agriculture support programs and the corporate controlled disaster in the livestock industry, minister Ritz is content to focus on breaking down the farmers’ only selling group.
– Eric Sagan,
Melville, Sask.
Wild inflation
Prime minister Stephen Harper is truly out of touch and misguided by our western Canadian rampant inflation. He spoke on television from overseas recently on Canada’s good strong economy, turning, in his own words, near two percent annual inflation.
What a joke. He should have said monthly inflation, which is so very true in the agricultural sector. He is so out of touch with reality, with the oil and fuel prices up 50 percent in one year. This is having a very negative impact on farming’s profitability with our diesel and gasoline prices up from 80 cents the last harvest to above $1.20 this harvest.
Obviously fertilizer is running the same course and pricing many farmers out of the market this coming 2009 season. …
Farmers and farm groups need to take immediate action on the out-of-control inflation in the agricultural sector. Higher priced production means nothing when it is all eroded by escalating operating costs….
If we Canadian farmers could for one year refuse to grow our products, leaving our land idle, what a difference that would make to our suppliers and our governments’ attitude towards our industry. The world cannot survive on oil, gas and woodchips alone. Agriculture is a core and very precious industry to man’s survival and well being.
Wake-up, Mr. Stephen Harper, and listen for once to Mr. Canadian Farmer.
– Nick Parsons,
Farmington, B.C.
Cold feeling
In the June 26 issue of The Western Producer, on the front page, our prime minister Stephen Harper is reported to have stated that people who are opposed to open market choices will get walked over.
This statement leaves me with a very cold feeling. I always understood that we, the people, had a right to object and that the law of the land was supreme. On page 73 of the same paper someone from Africa states in his country farmers do not have organizations or power to exact a better price. Is there a parallel? I’m confused.
– Lars E. Rude,
Tofield, Alta.
Mixed bag
Bill Rosher’s letter, (Open Forum, July 3) tries to compare CWB pool prices to United States Department of Agriculture weighted average prices. It fails.
I checked with officials at the USDA (statistics) branch about their methodology. They state that they do not separate out the various grades and protein levels for spring wheat and do not have the ability to do so. This means that all premiums, discounts and contracts across all quality levels, including feed, are averaged into one mixed bag number.
It is therefore wrong to compare this price to only certain CWB grades. Also, the final data for the year Mr. Rosher is trying to compare is not out yet on either side of the border, so it’s rather premature to be making these comparisons.
However, it is interesting to note the final 2006 crop year weighted average grab-bag price for spring wheat in North Dakota came in at $4.49 US per bushel. The final CWB pool return for the highest grade of CWB spring wheat, No. 1, 14.5 percent protein CWRS, worked back to Manitoba came in at $4.40 Cdn.
Even with our best wheat in 2006, the board couldn’t beat the weighted average grab bag North Dakota price.
– Rolf Penner,
Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association,
Morris, Man.
