While Western Canadian farmers are preparing to elect their first wheat board directors, farmers in New Zealand are debating whether to change their Dairy Board’s export monopoly.
There are probably just as many complexities in that debate as in the debate here over the wheat board.
But sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of basic principles when focusing on the complexities.
Dairy Board chair Dryden Spring does not seem in danger of making that mistake.
Deregulation, he agrees, has brought benefits in the telecommunications and transportation industries – mainly by lowering the prices that consumers pay.
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“But should that be our objective, or that of the Apple and Pear Board, or Zespri International?
“Of course not. Because our objective is to maximize returns for our products for farmers and for New Zealand – not minimize them.”
It makes sense that Canadian farmers who agree with that approach should look for similar views in the wheat board directors they elect.
Meanwhile, the current review of the rail transportation system for grain could similarly use focus on a few basic principles, without denying the complexities of the system.
It took just two sentences recently for Saskatchewan Wheat Pool president Leroy Larsen to sum up the fundamental issue:
“The producer is the foundation of the Western Canadian grain handling, transportation and marketing system.
“If farming is not profitable for farmers, there will be no need for the balance of the system.”
In the rail system, focusing on that principle suggests measures to lower the system’s overall costs, better define responsibilities, increase competition among railways, and retain regulatory ceilings on freight rates.
In rail policy as in trade policy and disaster relief, there must be a strong federal government commitment to maintain farmers’ net income.
“Market forces” have shown themselves to be effective in generating economic activity for urban industries, and cheap food for consumers.
But they have, more often than not, failed to provide adequate returns to the primary producers of food.
Where private enterprise, including co-operatives, can fill a need, governments should stay out of their way.
But when the marketplace fails to meet a basic need, it is legitimate for government to provide regulation or direct support to offset that failure.
To do its duty, the current federal government must show commitment to ensuring adequate farm income.
