Lipstick on a pig.......Poll?

[blackpowder]

I've been ruminating on my experiences at the C to C in Saskatoon in Jan.

I have finally realized you can't sit on a fence forever. I am either a socialist or I am not.

We spent 3/4 of the time watching mundane, old news, presentations.
The rest was spent not exchanging relevant theories on policy. NO.
It was spent being subtly assessed by middle mandarins about how we 'feel' about current delivery programs. 'Feel' about current services. Are we 'interested' in GM wheat. Felt like a marketing survey by a chemical company.

Cornering any mandarin about any minor issue felt like dropping a slip of paper in a suggestion box.

Often I've felt that the board VPs weren't that bad as they come from industry- just doing their job.

BUT I spent 30 mins talking with a 20 year board senior manager about my percieved lack of research in wheat genetics, biofortification, and buy backs.

GET THIS. He said the benefits to GM or mutagenic research to the yield curve in wheat (as in corn) MUST not exist, for if it did companies would have released them by now.

He said niche markets for zinc enriched wheat MUST not exist for if they did someone would be approaching them (CWB) for buybacks to export!
Kinda like saying "I don't see the egg, so therefore the chicken does not exist.

Exchanging forward looking ideas on our industry cannot happen within our present environment.
We are dealing with a large bureaucracy that for cultural reasons can never understand the principles of free enterprise, entrepreneurship, or for that matter the greater world around them.
Move the Canada Post or CRA personnel over to Exxon or WalMart for a year and they would be bankrupt. Different language, background, culture, planets.

The tragedy lies in the fact that such a small number of individuals (wheat producers) can't see the forest for the trees. We quarrel amongst ouselves about where to put the lipstick on the pig and what color to use. We can't see that it's still lipstick on a pig!

Debates on PPOs are useless wastes of time. They must all work in a pool.

I can sell my canola %25 per quarter and create my own damn pool if thats what I want.
It's not about comparing final prices on any given day. Over a long enough time span both systems may acheive an average. Like crop ins. indexes.
The point is we don't need to pay anyone to do this for us. And it's sheer lunacy to pay them to do this while shackled to pools and quarterly sales quotas.


We are fiddling while the rest of the world is on the move!
If a ND grower has access to a mutagenic or GM fusarium resistant wheat. How many Manitoba growers will care that Europe or Japan TODAY say they don't want it.
Is anyone being made aware of the investment being made in wheat research by the big boys in the last year?

We are sticking our head in the sand on so many issues, not even having the foresight to discuss them properly.

How much political and lobbying clout do our competitors have in Washington compared to ours in Ottawa?

4/5 of the participants at the conference were happy with things just the way they are, wanting no change to ANYTHING.

So, I ask you. How many more years do you think this self defeating behavior will continue??
The current system by law, by mandate, and by nature cannot evolve broadly enough to capitalize on a g'darn thing!
It's frustrating to think we're 20 years yet from any meaningful improvements to our system. By then how many opportunities will be squandered?
Voices need to unified and concentrated in the halls of power. Presently this is impossible.
This dog won't hunt. I know what I do with those.

[bucket]

The cwb has been resting on their laurels for 20 years and they seem intent on continuing.

They have essentially squandered an entire generation of brilliant farmers who, at the present time, should be getting paid very well for the changes they have made to their operations to stay in business during the lean years.

Now the 45 - 55 year olds are examining buyout offers they can't refuse and have a reasonable job to farm after the fact. Becoming a serf after feeding the world for 30 years.

Is the cwb to blame? MAybe maybe not. But they haven't helped to bring in energetic young farmers that get programs that meet their cash flow requirements. Instead they continue to force farmers to other crops to meet cashflow and sideline wheat durum and barley to a "rotation" crop. All the while building a bloated mess in winnipeg.

Good to see that the same shit is going on at the alumni meetings. That's progress isn't it?

By the way the people that get to go are, for the most part, a stacked crowd. They have researched your views before they let you go.

[stubblejumper]

why should a few wantabee yanks be able to tell the majority what to do

[silverback]

More brilliant rebuttal stubble.

If being a "yank" means getting the world price for the wheat I produce, I sure want to be one. I would settle for being able to ship my product to whoever wants to pay me that world price. Funny how that is never the board.

[oneoff]

Have Western Canadian farmers "kept up" the last few decades? We couldn't even get agreement on that question.
All I know is that my preferred courses of actions haven't been followed; and that I haven't been consulted at any stage. As such; those who have called the shots and pulled the strings are surely the ones who have been at the helm. They bear the responsibility of whatever state we as farmers are now in; and there is no indication that they have any desire to allow any deviation to the path they are still setting.
The beauty of the average age of farmers being what it is; is that there are mighty big changes set to take place. This is going to really get out of the hands of anyone's control.

[dak7]

Quit speaking ESKIMO

[blackpowder]

Stubblejumper, did you read my entire post??
It seems you relish accentuating the point I'm trying to make.
Catfighting over the lipstick doesn't help our industry.
This "vote" issue cannot sink to the level of a Bloc sovereignty design.
Honestly, in less than 10 years if ALL producers who sell more than 500 tonnes of wheat produced at 100% their own risk voted, we both know what the answer would be.
I'm grateful for any country that allows people to 'choose' to be a socialist.
Questioning my allegiances and calling your majority 'true' makes it sound more like national socialism.

[vvalk]

Stubble- you embarrass yourself.

[parsley]

blackpowder,

You make some stark observations, with an eye for frankness, in coming to your conclusion, and I thank you for them.

If you don't mind, one point I'd like to add is the weakness of present day <p></p>
<p><strong>[URL="http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/43691"](Peer Review.)[/URL]</strong></p>

Improving peer review can make a difference in results, in trust, in progress, imho.

In this link, one commenter says: {"The scientific-technological elite", the "education elite", together with the "funding, reviewing, publishing, reporting and what have you elite", are only prostituting themselves to globalizing commercial interests."}

I read that twice.

When farmers add up the shameless amount of money spent on the reams of CWB "studies", where only Board -friendly studies are advanced, we know peer review is a problem.

As well, manipulated global warming statistics have placed the scientific community squarley in disgace.

Comments in the link remind us that new scientific knowledge is beyond standard science, is beyond average peer review; only a few can actually comprehend the science.

It also reminds us that peer review is mostly anonymous, with no accountability, as is the case with biotech, their test results immunized under their patented umbrellas, but with no legal accountability for that patent.

Funding agencies often rely on the applicants to supply them with the legitimacy to fund, and consequently funders drive blind, but with your money.

This paper gives some ways to improve what is being done TO science and what is being done BY science. A worthwhile read.

I've taken the liberty of describing your more significant conclusion, and others' similar expressions, as thus: "The sons of mice will be holes."
Pars

[TOM4CWB]

GTO,

You are weird. What do I have to do with Obama and Carbon Credits?

[TOM4CWB]

Blackpowder;

How on earth... did a NFU ORGANIC wheat grower get elected to the CWB Board of Directors?

TO make sure organic growers are given continuing subsidies FROM CWB pools... continue to be given dual marketing choices... Canadian grain handling and environmental efficiencies,

All this talk about the intangible benefits of the CWB is rally annoying.

PLEASE stop talking ESKIMO!!!!

[TOM4CWB]

Black...

AND not just one NFU organic growers got elected... 3!!!

We commercial wheat growers are truly insane... and the CWB knows it!

[TOM4CWB]

at this time in the morning... I can hear laughing... all the way from Winapig... even against the wind!!!

[TOM4CWB]

And each noon... I get the stink... of Boared manure... from the radio... that I paid for the spread on...

It is almost enough to make me swear...

[TOM4CWB]

WHEN pigs laugh... and fly...