WP Letter to the editor

[ado089]

Well once in the while I flip through the producer by accident, kind of like when someone leaves the CBC on in the tractor and you jump in and listen for a while before you figure out something is wrong... Anyway here's a quote that sumerizes prety well how I imagine most board supporters feel.

Pre text is this guys dad needed to sell some wheat for cash flow pre-board, so like 75 years ago.

"Finally one day he decided to sell, thinking it was the best he could get. Within days the price went up. How was he to know? Someone else got the money he and my uncle should have had."

So the moral of the story is this guy 1)Can't manage cash flow, 2)Can't market grain 3) beleives it should be everyone elses problem that he has the first two issues.

Maybe we should follow this logic through to the end, maybe the government should also pool land, inputs, machinery, fuel, labor...oh ya that experiment was tried once and failed misserably.

It's now time to run a grown-up busines people.

[furrowtickler]

Back then the pony express only ran in the states and most new news was three months old here.... today the oasis nature channel overrides the farm news at the old folks homes - so still no way to get current market info for the same guys, sad I guess.

[sawfly]

ado89 hardly the attitude of board supporters.

more along the lines of the power of the single desk. one place to buy western Canadian wheat.
some price making ability , over price taking.

How well it works , well that has been the debate,

logically it should work,
it seemed to work for the chem co.s
as long as the borders were closed.

it seems to work for fertilizer co.s
would we be paying 55-60 cents a pound N if there were 20,000 fert
manufactures competing to sell us fert. I do not think so.

i guess we are never gonna really know if it worked or not.

your simplistic take on other peoples motives is just that simple

[checking]

How well it works?

A fence sitter will never find out.

[ado089]

Sawfly, the emotions highlighted in that quote are fear and envy, and really thats what the whole basis of the pro side argument. I'm sure a marketing board would make sense if all, or at least most farmers in the entire world were part of a marketing board, but the reality is that the little drop in the bucket that is the Canadian wheat market does not matter in the big picture. As long as there are dozens of low cost wheat exporting nations such as Kazakstan, Argentina, Ukraine competing against our dear CWB,it will not benefit to be cornered into a marketing board that has proven inept at moving either volume or quality and has done nothing domesticaly in regards to managing product quality outliers, i.e. ergot, to help revenue on the home front.

I have not sold a single kernal of grain to a line company this year yet and I've managed to sell at an average of $1/bu higher than posted spot prices, in one case I was able to sell lentils $.12/lb higher than any other quoted price simply by having a network of conected people in the grain trade and by being willing to load producer cars. Now imagine being able to do the same with wheat, loading a few cars of a product with the qualties people want and getting a premium for it. But I gues that would mean I'm getting the money that someone else deserves.