The CWB Debate Gets Personal

[Jay-mo]

Freewheat makes an excellent point on the barley vote. I too, voted the dual market option, but ever given the opportunity again, I would vote for an open market in a heartbeat.
The CWB continues to set itself up for extinction rather that adaption.

As far as Mr. Robsons letter, I find nothing worth rebutting in it. His bombshell argument being that Mr. Depape was once employed by Cargill?
I also find it entertaining that Robson finds the "numbers" in Depapes write-up to be "meaningless"!
He probably has trouble with math, which is why he thinks the CWB does such a great job! lol

[jensend]

why wouldn't mr depape expect to have his credibility as a market expert examined? most analysts are just apologists for what they said in the past, anyways. i wish the cwb would disappear just on the basis of property rights but to expect a wonderful new world after is dreaming in technicolor.

[parsley]

Fair enough jensend, examining his credentials and then reading him. Good business.

The women just read him because he's drop dead gorgeous. LOL Pars

[tipsy]

You know fran, you and mr. de pape and others have supplied more than enough evidence to show the the cwb is not a premium seller. In fact agrivillers have provided a number of web sites so any of us can track what our wheat is actually worth. I'm not very computer or technical savvy,but every once in a while find myself checking to see and to compare what my competing farmers are south,east,west and finally to the north of me are receiving for the wheat they sell. It did not take long but a nasty trend is starting to become evident. There are a lot of farmers in the world receiving more for their wheat than what I receive for mine. BTW I appreciate that info for being supplied. NOW if I can figure this out why is it that these self proclaimed intelligent and educated cwb directors not figure this out?
Thanks for all the information you guys dig up and keep up the good work.

[jensend]

parsley, that explains so much of what i believe about women.

[parsley]

You know jensend, your lack of a sense of humour reminds me why I view socialists the way I do. LOL Pars

[jensend]

no humour this morning. my son was standing beside the kid that got killed in olds thursday night. most of the time i have a great sense of humour but it might be directed differently than yours. btw i'm definitely not a socialist but i want sustainability in politics same as in agriculture.

[parsley]

Sorry to hear it jensend. All of us affect one another, don't we. Pars

[freewheat]

Sorry, I just thought of another point.

If I were one who had no idea what the wheat board entailed, I would look at the parties stands on the issue. Having never stood with the socialists (liberals), or the communists(ndp, bloc) on any other issue EVER, I would have to go with the conservative stance, the party I usually but not always agree with.

Here goes,

Liberals and ndp stand for the following few items on which I beleive them wrong:

They love the gun registry
They love killing unborn children
They love making marriage a farce
They stole millions of as yet unaccounted for tax dollars
They love the muslim president
They love Omar Khadr
They love the idea of a mosque on ground Zero
They love to hate conservative women, yet are supposedly pro women
The list goes on and on

So by normal deduction, if they are on the wrong side of so many issues, what is it that could possibly make them right on the CWB issue?

[CeePen]

I have to throw in my two cents here. I was the lead author of the Informa study back in 2008 that looked at the potential gains from an open market for board grains. Now that I'm no longer employed by Informa, I can speak freely about the study and how it was done.

Just to summarize, we found that opening up the market would save farmers $450-625 million per year through better prices, efficiencies and a quicker payment system. Even then, it was pointed out that we had missed some other gains such as impacts of shuffling money around in the pool accounts.

In any case, critics should know that I had no agenda in doing the study. When I started, I had no bias and felt that opening up the market would probably be a wash. Some gains, some losses but no net change. Boy, was I wrong.

Critics will also charge that the Alta govt funded and pulled the strings on the study. Yes, they paid for it but the only input they provided was to fix some typos and make sure I listed sources for the charts and tables. That's it. No evil agenda, just a straightforward look at the numbers.

Oh yes, the numbers. The CWB responded that the study only looked at high level data with no detail. That was their choice. We asked the CWB (in writing) for some sales volumes and quality information (without prices attached) but they refused to provide anything. So we did the best we could with the high-level numbers and they still showed the CWB was doing a poor job of marketing.

We didn't leave anything out and didn't twist the numbers to reach certain conclusions. The CWB's only defense was to attack the company (Informa) as being US-based. The US office of Informa was not involved in the study at all. It was just a farm boy from the Red River Valley in Manitoba who dared to actually crunch numbers. I agree with those that the only real debate should be over the numbers and I don't see any single-desk supporters doing that.

Just my two cents.