Now that just-re-appointed agriculture minister Gerry Ritz has revealed the government’s plans for the CWB – breaking both the wheat and barley monopolies for the 2012-13 crop year – we can think a bit more clearly about what farming life will be like afterwards.
And while most of the endless political and ideological debates of the past two decades have focused on single desk selling, the wheat board does quite a few other things that will probably disappear once its sales monopolies go. Even if some drastically reduced form of the CWB exists into the 2012-13 year, it will be too puny an organization to do a lot of the things it does now, presently being able to spread the costs out over a gigantic amount of grain. (A post-monopoly board would really just be a brokerage firm, most likely, of less than 100 people.)
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If you already don’t like the board, you probably think these things are just expensive frills. If you love the board, you’ll hate losing these services. If you’re an average farmer, you probably haven’t thought much about this, but should probably start thinking about it.
Here are a few things I think won’t exist without the board:
1) In-depth market analysis dedicated to Canadian (board) grains. No one does anywhere near the depth of analysis on the market outlook and situation for Western Canadian wheat, durum, malting barley and feed barley that the board provides. Lots of people do wheat market analysis, but it’s mostly based on U.S. futures markets and the way that the world supply and demand situation is affecting  those markets. It’s rather indirect. Perhaps various analysts will fill in the void. I’m sure many will try. But it’s doubtful it will be as focused or informed as the CWB analysts are able to be because they’re on the inside of a gigantic commercial selling enterprise that’s actually in the market.
2) Weather surveillance: I don’t think anyone thinks a private enterprise will begin analyzing prairie weather and crop conditions with anything near the depth of the CWB. Certainly no one’s going to be as public as the board has been with its estimates of where crops are at. Enterprises like World Weather Inc. out of Kansas City do a good big-picture job, but the board has been doing ground-level surveillance analysis for years that a lot of the overall agriculture industry has come to rely upon. Every CWB weather briefing I have attended in the past 10 years has brought out analysts from every major grain company and agriculture interest based in Winnipeg. They treat the CWB’s analysis like Americans treat the USDA’s. What’s going to replace that?
3) Communications: Some farmers complain about the CWB spending too much on communications, but the flip-side of that is that very few big interests in the prairie ag industry offer an information or insight into what’s happening inside the industry, and farmers are likely to be soon facing a much more opaque and monolithic grain industry. (As a reporter I must admit I have felt some comfort over the years in knowing there’s someone in the grain trade out there that feels compelled to speak to me if I have a question. Certainly the big grain companies feel no such compulsion.) The board talks publicly about a lot of stuff that will soon retreat behind the closed doors of grain industry boardrooms. Farmer organizations can whine, but most already feel ignored by the vested interests of the industry. I can’t imagine Viterra, Richardson and Cargill are considering filling that void and beginning to talk more publicly about many issues of importance to farmers. Even if you don’t like what the board has to say about a certain issue, at least they talk about it. In the future we’re likely to have a lot more silence and rumours.
4) A big farmer-focused industry player: Again, if you don’t like the positions the wheat board takes on a number of issues, you won’t mind seeing its role as a big advocate of ( at least certain) farmers disappearing. But if you like having a champion for the Port of Churchill, for supporting small shippers, for challenging the railways, you’ll miss the board being able to force the bigger players to pay attention to those issues.
Perhaps, if the market is functioning perfectly, all these absences will be filled by others. Markets, like nature, abhor vacuums. But how truly well-functioning the prairie grain industry and market is is an open question. with a rail duopoly and grain company triumvirate standing colossus-like above it all. And one thing I have learned in life – certainly since having children – is that it’s faster and easier to break something than it is to make or replace it.
