Bizarro Grainworld(PRODUCER.com; 2012-02-28)
Ed White
PRODUCER.com
2012-02-28
It’s a truly bizarre Grainworld this year, stunningly different in tone from the one I have been
covering for a decade.
It’s a bizarro world, in which everything you expect to see at Grainworld has been replaced by its opposite. It’s a little unsettling, because many of the speakers are the same, but they saying
different things, or saying what they.re saying in different ways.
Obviously this is a product of the conference being dropped by the Canadian Wheat Board and
picked up by Wild Oats. The board-dominated conference hosted a lot of CWB staffers giving their take on where markets were now and were going in the next year, and gave them a chance to demonstrate what they believed to be their competence and the presumed advantages of their single desk system.
Basically, it was a stage upon which the CWB could stride and pirouette, comfortable in its position as a world-leading exporter of grains.
That’s all gone this year, both at the conference and at the board itself. The new CWB might not be handling much grain at all next crop year, for all we... or they... know at this point. It’s all
up-in-the-air. And without its dominant role, it’s become a much, much smaller organization in
terms of the prairie grain economy. It’s played almost no role at the Grainworld conf so far this
year, although this morning marketing manager Gord Flaten will be part of a panel talking about the future, so the odd absence of the CWB will be mitigated somewhat.
But the bizarro element of Grainworld, to me at least, is the speed with which the rest of the industry has shoveled dirt on the casket of the old CWB and thrown off any polite recognition of its possible former value. Yesterday there was a general message from a few speakers about the idea that prairies farmers have been growing the wrong kind of wheat for years, and should get away from low-yield, high-quality stuff that isn’t bringing the premiums it’s supposed to bring. The implication here, and at conferences I’ve been to all winter, is that the old CWB worked hard to convince farmers to grow wheat, durum, and barley that it could most easily sell, but which probably wasn’t the best-returning sort of grain for farmers to grow. High-yielding, low-quality, low-input, low management wheat will probably make the farmer more money, was the view that was coming across from a few people. That’s an argument that’s been around for years, but now people at Grainworld feel free to say it out loud, and weirdly there are few to defend the former board’s legacy. Present board staff work for the government now, and it’s the government that never believed in the single desk and which wants to see a viable open market CWB.
So it’s not their role to speak up for the single desk board, which is something they always did before. It must be a bizarro situation for board staff to now be trying to convince people the board is viable in an open market when the argument just five months ago was that it was unviable and pointless without the single desk.
The most bizarre element of this iteration of Grainworld is the list and tenor of some of the people who have taken the podium. Gerry Ritz gave a triumphal speech yesterday, and Jim Pallister gave a quite moving hymn of praise for the new marketing environment. Somehow I doubt they would have been doing that if the CWB was still running Grainworld. Of course, the new CWB might have had these folks there, because the new CWB is a totally different organism to the old one.
But it’s a bizarro world this year at Grainworld, and I’m heading back right now for day two.
Perhaps a bizarro Ed White will appear there, this one well-dressed, shaven, prepared and
uncynical. He will also be tall and wealthy.
Ed White
PRODUCER.com
2012-02-28
It’s a truly bizarre Grainworld this year, stunningly different in tone from the one I have been
covering for a decade.
It’s a bizarro world, in which everything you expect to see at Grainworld has been replaced by its opposite. It’s a little unsettling, because many of the speakers are the same, but they saying
different things, or saying what they.re saying in different ways.
Obviously this is a product of the conference being dropped by the Canadian Wheat Board and
picked up by Wild Oats. The board-dominated conference hosted a lot of CWB staffers giving their take on where markets were now and were going in the next year, and gave them a chance to demonstrate what they believed to be their competence and the presumed advantages of their single desk system.
Basically, it was a stage upon which the CWB could stride and pirouette, comfortable in its position as a world-leading exporter of grains.
That’s all gone this year, both at the conference and at the board itself. The new CWB might not be handling much grain at all next crop year, for all we... or they... know at this point. It’s all
up-in-the-air. And without its dominant role, it’s become a much, much smaller organization in
terms of the prairie grain economy. It’s played almost no role at the Grainworld conf so far this
year, although this morning marketing manager Gord Flaten will be part of a panel talking about the future, so the odd absence of the CWB will be mitigated somewhat.
But the bizarro element of Grainworld, to me at least, is the speed with which the rest of the industry has shoveled dirt on the casket of the old CWB and thrown off any polite recognition of its possible former value. Yesterday there was a general message from a few speakers about the idea that prairies farmers have been growing the wrong kind of wheat for years, and should get away from low-yield, high-quality stuff that isn’t bringing the premiums it’s supposed to bring. The implication here, and at conferences I’ve been to all winter, is that the old CWB worked hard to convince farmers to grow wheat, durum, and barley that it could most easily sell, but which probably wasn’t the best-returning sort of grain for farmers to grow. High-yielding, low-quality, low-input, low management wheat will probably make the farmer more money, was the view that was coming across from a few people. That’s an argument that’s been around for years, but now people at Grainworld feel free to say it out loud, and weirdly there are few to defend the former board’s legacy. Present board staff work for the government now, and it’s the government that never believed in the single desk and which wants to see a viable open market CWB.
So it’s not their role to speak up for the single desk board, which is something they always did before. It must be a bizarro situation for board staff to now be trying to convince people the board is viable in an open market when the argument just five months ago was that it was unviable and pointless without the single desk.
The most bizarre element of this iteration of Grainworld is the list and tenor of some of the people who have taken the podium. Gerry Ritz gave a triumphal speech yesterday, and Jim Pallister gave a quite moving hymn of praise for the new marketing environment. Somehow I doubt they would have been doing that if the CWB was still running Grainworld. Of course, the new CWB might have had these folks there, because the new CWB is a totally different organism to the old one.
But it’s a bizarro world this year at Grainworld, and I’m heading back right now for day two.
Perhaps a bizarro Ed White will appear there, this one well-dressed, shaven, prepared and
uncynical. He will also be tall and wealthy.
Comment