From this weeks Agriweek...
The Canadian Wheat Board recently said that it is trying to persuade buyers that wheat with a statutory grade of No. 3 CWRS is actually pretty decent wheat. It said in a publication to farmers that it is trying to “familiarize” customers who normally buy Nos. 1 and 2 that 3 has “positive intrinsic qualities” that make it usable for many purposes where grades 1 and 2 have been traditionally preferred.
Over 60% of the 2010 prairie wheat harvest, a record-high proportion, has been grading No. 3 or 4 CW. The Wheat
Board also said it is trying to segregate Nos. 1 and 2 more carefully in the handling system so that users who insist on top quality will not go short. It mentioned Japanese and Canadian millers as being in this group.
As a matter of the reality of modern business, firstly it is between exceedingly difficult and impossible to persuade many customers to take any action that is not in their interests as they perceive and interpret them. What the Wheat Board is suggesting is akin to the used-car salesman in the grotesque sports jacket. Today’s grain import customers are the best judges of what is in their interests.
But if the Wheat Board has the almost unheard-of skill of talking buyers into buying what it has to sell instead of what they really want, why has it not promoted low-grade wheat before now? Every year some western grain farmers have the bad luck to have their wheat downgraded. The Board’s spreads between the top grades and Nos. 3 and 4 have always been extremely large, much wider than
in open markets, as presented by northern-state American buyers.
Western wheat that the statutory grade system deems to be substandard No. 4 or 5 can be quite acceptable in other markets, especially if it has a good falling number, a critical quality
characteristic that is not measured in the Canadian grading system.
American elevators just across the border, which buy and sell wheat based on its properties, routinely offer much better prices than the Wheat Board for all types of wheat, but especially for the lower grades. That includes wheat with high fusarium content, frost damage and wheat that falls short on the Canadian statutory grading system for some highly arbitrary and capricious reasons such as kernel appearance.
Eastern Canadian wheat growers do not have this problem because eastern wheat is not subject to the same statutory grade standards that apply to western wheat. Ontario and other eastern wheat can be and is exported in substantial quantities to markets that are not interested in Wheat Board wheat without the archaic and ridiculous restrictions that the Canada Grain Act applies only to prairie wheat.
It is time to recognize the economic damage being done to western grain growers by the statutory grain grading system and to start doing something about it. <b>No other wheat exporting country has a government-enforced statutory grading system.</b> That should be more than reason enough to overhaul the Canadian policy, which dates from the time of Marquis wheat. <b>To grade and sell wheat according to this archaic system is the same as to grow it with a Rumely Oil Pull 30-60.</b>
It is appalling that so little attention is being paid to this subject in the continuing noisy debate about government grain policy. It has been personally demonstrated to every western farmer who has ever taken a
wheat sample to a North Dakota or Montana elevator that there are more objective and accurate ways to establish wheat quality and value than the Canadian system and almost any quality of Canadian wheat is systematically worth more there than here.
Statutory grading is exactly opposed to the time-tested concept that the customer is always right. It is commonly known in the trade that the Wheat Board often ships wheat of a higher theoretical statutory grade than the export customer ordered because the exact specified grade is not conveniently available. Export customers have figured this out
and many now routinely order wheat of a lower grade than they intend, reasonably expecting that they will get more than they pay for. This is wrong. <b>Statutory grading stacked on top of single-desk monopoly marketing is killing the western wheat
economy.</b> The prairie region is better adapted to cereal grain production than almost any other place in the world. But resources are being diverted into canola, pulses and other crops to which the region is not as well adapted because of communistic and unresponsive grading and marketing systems that have no place in the contemporary globally-oriented free- market country.
Anybody wanna buy a good used Oil Pull?
The Canadian Wheat Board recently said that it is trying to persuade buyers that wheat with a statutory grade of No. 3 CWRS is actually pretty decent wheat. It said in a publication to farmers that it is trying to “familiarize” customers who normally buy Nos. 1 and 2 that 3 has “positive intrinsic qualities” that make it usable for many purposes where grades 1 and 2 have been traditionally preferred.
Over 60% of the 2010 prairie wheat harvest, a record-high proportion, has been grading No. 3 or 4 CW. The Wheat
Board also said it is trying to segregate Nos. 1 and 2 more carefully in the handling system so that users who insist on top quality will not go short. It mentioned Japanese and Canadian millers as being in this group.
As a matter of the reality of modern business, firstly it is between exceedingly difficult and impossible to persuade many customers to take any action that is not in their interests as they perceive and interpret them. What the Wheat Board is suggesting is akin to the used-car salesman in the grotesque sports jacket. Today’s grain import customers are the best judges of what is in their interests.
But if the Wheat Board has the almost unheard-of skill of talking buyers into buying what it has to sell instead of what they really want, why has it not promoted low-grade wheat before now? Every year some western grain farmers have the bad luck to have their wheat downgraded. The Board’s spreads between the top grades and Nos. 3 and 4 have always been extremely large, much wider than
in open markets, as presented by northern-state American buyers.
Western wheat that the statutory grade system deems to be substandard No. 4 or 5 can be quite acceptable in other markets, especially if it has a good falling number, a critical quality
characteristic that is not measured in the Canadian grading system.
American elevators just across the border, which buy and sell wheat based on its properties, routinely offer much better prices than the Wheat Board for all types of wheat, but especially for the lower grades. That includes wheat with high fusarium content, frost damage and wheat that falls short on the Canadian statutory grading system for some highly arbitrary and capricious reasons such as kernel appearance.
Eastern Canadian wheat growers do not have this problem because eastern wheat is not subject to the same statutory grade standards that apply to western wheat. Ontario and other eastern wheat can be and is exported in substantial quantities to markets that are not interested in Wheat Board wheat without the archaic and ridiculous restrictions that the Canada Grain Act applies only to prairie wheat.
It is time to recognize the economic damage being done to western grain growers by the statutory grain grading system and to start doing something about it. <b>No other wheat exporting country has a government-enforced statutory grading system.</b> That should be more than reason enough to overhaul the Canadian policy, which dates from the time of Marquis wheat. <b>To grade and sell wheat according to this archaic system is the same as to grow it with a Rumely Oil Pull 30-60.</b>
It is appalling that so little attention is being paid to this subject in the continuing noisy debate about government grain policy. It has been personally demonstrated to every western farmer who has ever taken a
wheat sample to a North Dakota or Montana elevator that there are more objective and accurate ways to establish wheat quality and value than the Canadian system and almost any quality of Canadian wheat is systematically worth more there than here.
Statutory grading is exactly opposed to the time-tested concept that the customer is always right. It is commonly known in the trade that the Wheat Board often ships wheat of a higher theoretical statutory grade than the export customer ordered because the exact specified grade is not conveniently available. Export customers have figured this out
and many now routinely order wheat of a lower grade than they intend, reasonably expecting that they will get more than they pay for. This is wrong. <b>Statutory grading stacked on top of single-desk monopoly marketing is killing the western wheat
economy.</b> The prairie region is better adapted to cereal grain production than almost any other place in the world. But resources are being diverted into canola, pulses and other crops to which the region is not as well adapted because of communistic and unresponsive grading and marketing systems that have no place in the contemporary globally-oriented free- market country.
Anybody wanna buy a good used Oil Pull?
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