Voting for Marketing Choice Can Help Cattlemen

[parsley]

1. FEED Barley/wheat DA growers can sell to any feedlot in Canada including Alberta. That's off-Board feed grain.

2. Off-board feed grains can't be exported. Only the CWB can export DA FEED Barley/wheat.

3. That's a prohibition of off-board feed grain.

4. That's a violation of NAFTA Article 309.

5. R-CALF, for example could be looking for a way, (not to stop grain imports as has been done in the past), but to STOP CATTLE IMPORTS.

6. BEEF IMPORTS, HOG IMPOTS, LAMB IMPORTS,can crash-halt at the border. How will this happen?

7. Well, R-Calf did challenge Canadian cattle in the past, using the CWB as the reason, but R-Calf lost. Why?

8. They lost because R-CALF challenged the selling of CWB-grain. The last dozen or so challenges have all been the same....attacking the CWB selling their own legally-owned CWB grain.

9. When you legally separate Board-owned grain from off-Board grain, that provides grounds for a new threat because the action will focus on the vulnerability of the CWB pointing to the grain the CWB doesn't sell...the Off-Board grain.

10.. The CWB absolutely prohibits the export of off-Board feed grain, and that is a violation of Article 309 in NAFTA. That's the reason for a trade action.

11. That's when all livestock, not just beef, will sit at the border, waiting for the CWB to "un-prohibit".

12. Meantime, that meat will be aged a little more than the customer likes.

13.If the Designated Area producer has the choice to export his grain, there is no prohibition, and hence, no trade action is warranted.

Parsley

[grassfarmer]

What a load of nonsense, you'd better head back to the anti-CWB message board. Don't you know the fools in most of the livestock commodity organisations are already voting for this "marketing choice" just like they are voting for an end to supply management? Instead perhaps they should learn from the "BSE" crisis in the beef sector and see how "much marketing choice" has helped in a "free market" Truth is we have been way worse affected by having no real marketing choice than you boys in the grain sector claim to have been. Having a Government funded, price fixing oligopoly as the only buyer for our beef will be the same situation you find yourselves in if you succeed in getting rid of the CWB.
We used to have a milk marketing board in Scotland with the same powers and methods as the CWB. It was deregulated in 1994 - milk price to the producer has since fallen from 24p per litre to 16p per litre. Ah, the joys of having marketing choice though. The remaining dairy farmers are trying to reform producer co-ops. Same with the CWB, if you get rid of it the survivors will want something similar started up again inside a generation.

[parsley]

Good Morning grassfarmer,

We've had a sixty year lesson on how the single desk has served Western farmers, (you live in Canada, now)), and I think we've tried to feed our families on the results of that experiment, resulting in ever-increasing numbers of farmers trying to escape from the single-arm of Government.

We've personally calved-out countless cows over the years, and in my experience, cattlemen have always been a heads-up group, and good people. Problem is, Gov't/Gov't-run institutions don't always give farmers a heads-up. (Like the Crow).

Knowing that the border may clang shut to your beef tenderloins would be a direct result of the CWB's policy decision to prohibit the Americans from buying feed grain that Eastern chicken farmers (anyone feeding livestock)have already been buying from the DA.

Cheap domestic feed>
Prohibition>
Trade Action>
Clang Clang.

Sign in McDonald's: "Hamburger Aged for 3 years"

To me , that's a heads-up. Don't shoot the messenger.

Parsley

[cowman]

Now maybe I've been influenced by to many "old rednecked grain farmers" but quite frankly I don't see any difference between the cattlemen or grainfarmers in my area? In fact they usually are both...grain growers and cattlemen?
Jim Chatenay(our CWB rep), was a Charlais breeder, besides growing grain? I note when he was in jail for selling a bag of barley to a 4H member in Montana( that should shock you!), that mostly the bigger grain farmers in the area took off his crop? And wonders of wonders...most of them raised either cattle or hogs!
Maybe it is the area...but we are not into this livestock versus grain...because the fact is we are engaged in both?
I doubt you could find one farmer, in my area, who isn't disgusted with how the grain business has performed in the last twenty years? And the fact is...the CWB has to admit they were a big part of the problem! We keep voting, how we see it...and we keep voting Chatenay in...and we keep wondering how come no one else sees it this way?
This area is anti-wheat board, without a doubt? Grassfarmer is in the very small minority of idealogues!

[perfecho]

I have to admit that I know little about the wheat board; however a couple of issues raise flags. One is the extreme gov. push to put this through. Somehow I doubt this push has come from farmers...you can see both provincially and federally what the results were when producers complained over the BSE issues. Basically nothing. Other than, (and Ralph and Shirley especially), glowing support for our packing industry. This would make me question if the real push is not coming from monopoly driven sources, who seem to have the right "friends".
This seems to parallel the "insider" optimism on ethanol/bio fuel that was ignited a few years ago, but is really only making the headlines recently. Could it be that some feel it may be necessary to control this commodity more so? I doubt very many producers will be able to export grain on their own, just like cattle, it will have to go through "industry standards". And these "industry standards" have left cattle producers with very few options.

[kato]

I agree with grassfarmer. There have been a lot of changes since we started farming, but they haven't all been good.

When oats came off the Wheat Board, it benefited some, especially in Alberta. In Manitoba however, we've had times since then that the price of oats has been less than the price of freight. How is that an improvement? Freight rates in our province are much higher than in Alberta since the end of the Crow.

Actually, this end the Wheat Board campaign sounds eerily like the end the Crow campaign now that I think of it. And the end the egg, poultry and milk marketing boards campaign that is bound to happen next will sound the same.

The beef industry is in foreign hands, which has sure been good for us eh? I would suggest a number of the people in the background who can hardly wait to see the end of the Wheat Board, and are pushing buttons to see that it happens, are also benefiting from the stranglehold over the beef industry.

Could this be a vote for sovereigncy thinly disguised as a vote for marketing choice?

[blackjack]

...the way i see it...is that we are going to go from subsidizing the cwb to subsidizing adm and cargill...just different players grabbing the dough(no pun intended...lol)from the farmer's gate...

[parsley]

cowman,

Chatenay has been a loyal director to your area. He hasn;t veered from his mission. You're lucky.

This is most definitely not a grain-farmer versus cattle-farmer issue, and I have no intention of trying to make it one. This is asking for a bit of help.

I am saying that CWB policy, as it now enforced, is a threat to livestock/products coming into the USA.

I am saying that grain farmers who want choice, and cattlemen who eye the US market, both have a common problem, ....the CWB policy of not allowing any off-Board farmer-held grain from entering the USA.

The common problem is a trouble-making policy.Let's eliminate the problem.


perfecho...the way to solve this problem was identified over 10 years ago, but the CWB is like a leech.

They have used farmer's money to tell farmers what to think, what to do.
Grain farmers can't live on what's left. So,they grow other crops.

Parsley

[Horse]

Well I am with perfecho no this as I cant market my 10/20,000 bu grain so I am bound to have to bendover for someone so why not a fellow countryman instead of a yankey.
Mabey if the govmt would get those welfare cows off the govmt tit that would put some more cattle back on owned land and that would reduce the amount of grain and beef and then mabey we all would benifet instead of a few. That is of course if supply is realy the culpret.

[northfarmer]

I choose to bend over for no one, canadian or yankee.......i raise cattle and grain.....

I am for marketing choice, the truer the market the more efficent the system......

do not blame the packer consolidation on investors(americans, canadians, wherever the share captial comes from), blame it on the regulators who allowed the mergers to consolidate the power in the hands of so few..government role in a free market economcy is to regulate, not to micro or macro manage..they stopped the banks from merging, they can kibosh these deals if there is the poilitcal will!...

[nicolaas]

I agree northfarmer, the governments job is to prevent a monopoly and ensure resonable competition. It may be working, as they are making one of the bigboys sell a terminal on the coast.

[parsley]

nicolass,

The "governments job is to prevent a monopoly and ensure resonable competition" comment is about the best one I've seen written for a long time.

Parsley

[grassfarmer]

Parsley, I think nicolaas was talking about real world monopolies not the CWB issue which is something different all together.