A solution yes or no? If not then why?

[Fransisco]

prairiesodbuster said, "I just would like one time to blow their socks off buy having a uniform coherent strategy that will benefit most if not all farmers."

Thats pretty tough to do when we can't even agree on basic principles. Like being able to agree to disagree on something and simply going our seperate ways.

[parsley]

There is absolutely NO negotiating being able to choose.

It's like disabling the trigger on a gun.

Once you have lost the basic action, what is left?

Submission? Relegation? Bribing?

To subscribe to any of them castrates novelty, castrates ingenuity, castrates bolts out of the blue, because each one of us has that original spark that often no one else is able to ignite in the right place at the right time.

Choice is what enables you to be you. Parsley

[fjlip]

All options are complicated. More rules and costs. Nightmare to administer. A CWB without the monopoly, that could contract every grain grown for those who wish to use it and a completely open world market choice would make everyone happy. So simple, yet so much rhetoric. As neighbor said, "hope to live to see it change". One last hope is the next federal election. Maybe a slight chance of change. If we don't see a majority, sorry guys, IMO, game over.

[TOM4CWB]

Prairie,

I have no interest in shipping wheat to the US... when the cost is at least $20/t LESS to go through my own country and port.

This whole mess is crazy.

To be capable to go south, west, or east is what will bring competition and efficiencies that produce better returns for grain farmers in the 'designated area'. BUT that would never do...

Only in Canada... do we trip over ourselves... in the 'designated area'... to find better ways of lowering competition and hence our prosperity.

Are we ever smart!

[PrairieSodBuster]

I guess even a compromise is not possible for some people and as long as absolutes are held tightly then this argument will go on and on and on. Parsley I can read and I suspect better than you I know what you said. However to find something that all farmers can live with we all have to learn to compromise and if my solution would be acceptable to the majority I'd take it. There has to be something we all can agree on!?!? Why should your little operation be able to dictate what the rest of us want?

Francisco...of course one oil or one steel company doesn't control all the export of their commodities. Each company ships to whom ever they choose and those minerals are owned by "the crown". You would think then that there would be greater control over these because of that fact. So why are we "controlled". Well there is you and there is me and our neighbors and we may be hugh farmers in our district, but we still are smaller than the other players.

So okay lets get rid of the CWB I'm sure I can live without it. Just as long as we don't wind up getting rid of the CWB and getting the grain companies stepping in to take their place or someone else simply because we are not strong enough as individuals. I have found that when people start saying they have my best interests at heart (i.e Viterra, Pioneer, or Cargill) I have to check to see if my wallet is still in my pocket. Do I fault them, no their business is to make money for their shareholders (and bonuses for their executives). We had the Pools, but even they towards the end thought themselves more company than co-operative and most farmers didn't see the writing on the wall until the last merger. So how do we gain power over our industry to insure that we don't get screwed? Before people explode...I'm not saying the CWB is our voice, they aren't they are the voice of the government as a government agency. However we all better learn to co-operate again and to compromise or we'll continue to be at the mercy of those who have more power than us.
Anyway it's is always interesting reading the comments and some of you are truly willing to look for solutions others not so willing but hopefully we all will find our way to something that works and where we can be farmers and earn enough of our farms without having to do all the other things.

[PrairieSodBuster]

Parsley I apologize for saying anything about your farm and how you operate. Believe me I don't care how YOU operate YOUR farm. You may call me a "panty waist". However as opposed to you I want to find a solution and I know to do so you have to compromise and sometimes the compromises are easy to handle and sometimes they are not. However that is what people have done since the beginning of time, it happens in trade you take a little less in something to get a little more in something else. Oh and having dealt with a few Japanese in my life they value consensus and compromise to achieve an optimum. So can you be so obstinate when dealing with them...probably not.
Funny how the right wing and the left wing can't be moved and the rest of us have to put up with their windiness. So please feel free to vent your spleen (and no I don't care about YOUR spleen either) I truly wish that the Canadian "Tea Party" bunch would move to Texas and the Left Wingers would move to France and then maybe we could get something done in this country and everyone would be happy. I'm sure to get spanked for that but oh well.

[Fransisco]

PSB- you might find this hard to believe but you're sounding like a radical yourself. Someone who is radical about positioning yourself in the middle, a radical for compromise if you will.

If you take offense to this characterization, I apologize it is not my intention to offend but to comment on what I see in your words.

Let me ask you this. If you know what is right and you know what is wrong who wins in a compromise between the two?

If you need a 4 foot length of 2x4 and all you have is a ten foot piece what do you do? Do you cut it down to 4 feet or do you split the difference, compromise, and cut it at 7 feet? Of course you cut it down to 4 feet because a 7 foot piece is really no better than a 10 footer. In this compromise between right and wrong it is wrong who won.

Yes there are times when one can compromise and it makes sense to do so but it is when the two parties agree on basic principles. For example when you're haggling over price. You want to sell, they want to buy its just a question of how much. But if someone wanted your grain for nothing, no compromise, agreement or discussion would be possible, only the total surrender of one or the other.

Its the equivalent of trying to compromise with someone who is robbing your house. Even if you talk him into just taking a couple of teaspoons and a coffee mug, you've still been robbed and you've surrendered your right to property to someone else.

Back to the wheat board argument. Are the PPO's better than what we had before with just pooling. Yes they are. Your idea of an open North American market is probably also better than what we have now. But both of these are still like that 7 foot 2x4 or the burglar who agreed to only take a couple of items from your house. It is still wrong. It may be a bit better, a bit closer to being right but it is still wrong.

Maybe the problem isn't the radicals or whack jobs, as you've called them in the past, on the right or left side of the equation. Maybe the problem is those in the 'middle' who refuse to take an honest look at the issue and refuse to decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong.

And the belief that there is some kind compromise short of a voluntary board that will ultimately satisfy everyone and bring peace to the land is in and of itself wrong. As has happened in the past it will not satisfy, but dissatisfies everybody, it will not lead to general fulfillment, but to general frustration. As you are already seeing here.

[parsley]

I take no insult, prairie. Being not privy to another person's selection from their choice options,well, it's difficult to understand the reasoning driving another's choice.

It's really nice to be able to do the things we choose to do.

In our case, the considerations are: being of retirement age, debt-free, additional interests, and neither child chose farming.

Your life considerations will be very different. As they should be.

But what does bother me is the idea that we have to think the same way.

You, (I truly wish that the Canadian "Tea Party" bunch would move to Texas) and Rockerfeller would like to squelch voices you don't like:

http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/015375.html#comments

Maybe it would be a better social package for the modelling industry to get rid of all the 'ugly girls' by sterilizing them.

How about stuffing the people who ask for the Liberation treatment, down a well?

If you've been married awhile, then you will have carved out a list of the things your spouse does that drives you crazy.

There is not commonality with regards to choice.

But I want you to think about this....it is choice that provides each of us with what is good for us. For you. For me.

The compromization of choice itself will bring you one sole path to follow, with strings pulled by the invisible; auditably unaccountable.

Be careful for what you ask for. Your progeny may be the ones slapped on a table in Taipan, and forcefully aborted, simply because their genes didn't measure up on the mathematical measure, even though a non-valuable musical measure was gauged genius.

Pars

[PrairieSodBuster]

Well just go on thinking that if you hold fast to an absolute position that the world is going to suddenly adopt that position. My only regret about you is that you have the ability to procreate...so much for survival of the smartest, the fittest and yes those willing to co-operate.
I had some time this week and wanted to see if there was anyway that I could find a position where everyone would be happy. Pretty much the only people who responded were the ones who will never try to see anyone else's position might also be valid. So this leads me further to believe that there will be no changes and you will waste your lives pounding the table and screaming that "you'z been rob'd". I certainly tried to compromise with you...but you won't be happy with anyone moving closer to your position, no you want it all. Well it don't work that way...so grow the hell up! I've looked over the past postings and I see it is a few people here who seem to have an inordinate amount of time to be wind bags. This leads me to believe that most of your time is split between being a windbag here, being a windbag at the local coffee shop and being an even bigger windbag over a "few beer" at the local lounge. So please feel free to rant I have no further time for you unless you can see your way clear to maybe accepting that another person's point of view may have some validity too. Yes fanatics and radicals like Communist, Nazis, Fascist, White Supremists are all fixed on their positions to, they also believe in absolutes with no compromise and luckily history has or will cast them upon the trash heap of humanity. It people who will not compromise who have been the cause of wars, genocide and other acts of inhumanity. You have a long way to go to get there. There I can handle being called a pantywaist, but "the meek shall inherit the world". However while you continue to rant at the CWB and rant at all those who don't completely share your ideals and rant at all those who try to find a compromise...bet your ass I will find a way to survive as you go down shaking your fist at the world.
Further more yes I will take aim at the right and left wing, because you always claim you have rights...such as freedom of speech, but you seem to like to stomp all over another persons because they disagree with you. Last time I wrote was to give you a shot of your own medicine. However you are so narrowminded that you didn't realize that you do this to other people on an ongoing and continual basis...unless of course they agree with you and I'm not sure anyone has that ability in your eyes.
To you there is no solution so I leave you to your own personal hell.

[Fransisco]

Good grief PSB you need to take a deep breath and look in the mirror. If you can't discuss these things without blowing a gasket every time you hear an opinion you disagree with you're not much of a moderate then are you.

[Fransisco]

Do you honestly believe that if farmers are given the simple choice to sell to the wheat board, or not, its going to lead to the next global Communist, Nazis, Fascist, White Supremist take over of the world? Honestly, do you? Are you listening to yourself? What kind of a 'moderate' actually believes this?

[Fransisco]

And if you're so upset with the idea of absolutes then why not with the wheat board? It's certainly a "it's my way or a jail cell for you kind of absolute.

Cooperation is a great thing but do you really believe you can force it into existence? No, you can't. Not in the long run.