Dual Market……Open Market??

[Kasro]

Dear Tom Halpenny,

You have intimated in numerous contributions that you have made to these discussions, that the people supporting a dual market are somehow dishonest. You say that what they really are promoting is an open market, and that somehow is deceitful. I hope I can clear up the confusion that you seem to have over this.

Let me define some terms for you, as they are commonly used and understood:

Dual Market: A market where farmers could choose to sell through voluntary pooling schemes operated by the Canadian Wheat Board or other grain marketers, or sell for cash to the Canadian Wheat Board (if it offered to buy this way) or other grain marketers.

Open Market: (see Dual Market)

Voluntary CWB: (see Dual Market)

Marketing Choice: (see Dual Market)


So Tom, I hope you can get over your bewilderment regarding this. Or, if as I suspect, you knew this all along, try and display a little more deference for the intelligence of us farmers. We all know EXACTLY what we mean, whether we support a dual market, or whether we don’t. Nobody is trying to fool anybody.

Your attempts at confounding look a lot like self-interest. And it really doesn’t work anyway.


Best Regards,
Kasro

[TOM4CWB]

Kasro;

One more issue needs to be added to clarify the dual market...

A free export license, or nobuyback license, as Parsley calls it, is NOT dual or open marketing... but it does end the monopoly or single desk.

If the CWB were to issue free export licenses, as they do for the rest of Canadian wheat and barley producers, then the elevators, railways, and port terminals all still must deal with the CWB monopoly...

The primary function of the CWB Act, is to control the grain handling system, including transportation and grading standards.

If I sell into the US..., I sell and grade using US standards, and my wheat or barley is blended into approx. 50mmt US system of wheat marketing for domestic and export consumption.

Essentially, the US has more than enough wheat to easily look after domestic needs, by 2X, much like Canada, this year.

Transportation arbitage causes movement of Canadian grain into US domestic markets, that could be easily served by US production, if all other things were equal (ie. CWB didn't use price discrimination to penitate the US domestic market).

Further Transportation Arbitrage gives the CWB a significantly lower cost of procurement from farmers.
This is because our freight costs as so much less particularily from the western half of the "designated area"

So CWB cash prices, if offered, SHOULD beat US Portland prices, hands down if the CWB is doing as good a job of marketing as US grain marketers.

Therefore, even free nobuyback export licenses are leaving "designated area" wheat and barley producers at a significant transportation disadvantage over US producers...

Plus, Canadians we are told, have a quality advantage through our grading and handling system...

Making CWB products that much more commpetitive than free nobuyback export license wheat or barley that gets blended into the huge US pool of US graded grain.

SO Thalpenny, issuing free licenses as the CWB Act requires (in the same manner as you are required to do for Ontario wheat producers),...

to all those "designated area" producers who refuse to offer grain they produced themselves,...

to the CWB,...

in no way ends the Canadian "single desk" monopoly system over the Canadian grading, transportation, and handling systems.

This is why it is unbelevable that the Canadian government... would throw Canadian farmers in jail.... for taking one 50lb sack of wheat across the US border and giving it to a Montana 4-H club!

[les]

I still say just scrap the C.W.B. once and for all.

[Kasro]

TOM4CWB,

Tom, you too are confounding a very simple concept. The no-buyback license, while fine as a temporary measure, is not an open market. In the 21st century, it is time to truly set the wheat and barley peasants free. They’ve been freed in oats, and have always been free in other grains and oilseeds. Nobody is clamoring to get under the cloak of the CWB with any other grains or oilseeds. And nobody needs any bloody export licenses to do business in them either. We don’t need no-buyback licenses. We don’t need any licenses at all.

Above all, we DO NOT NEED an agency of government protecting us from ourselves in the marketplace. Neither do we need a heavy-handed regulator stifling innovative solutions to transportation and handling. The minimal, ordinary anti-competitive legislation and regulation that govern other business is good enough for grain too. Good grief, its good enough for what we buy, why isn’t it good enough for what we sell?

I want Tom Halpenny to understand the meaning of a dual market. Since I suspect really he does, I want to put an end to this silly prattle over some imagined differences. He has no point to make here. But the culture of the current CWB doesn’t lend itself to a free, open, and informed discussion, let alone a free and open market. And it certainly doesn’t lead any efforts toward informed discussion. Lets not get dragged into an irrelevant debate about whether a dual market is an open market.

As I said, everyone knows what the blazes we’re talking about. I think the CWB should really be engaged in a meaningful and worthwhile discussion about how we are going to get there from here. But regrettably, they seem incapable of that.

It’s time for them to lead, follow, or get out of the way.


Kasro

[parsley]

les,

I like your message! Do you have some additional thoughts on how to delete the CWB from our lives?

Parsley

[TOM4CWB]

Kasro;

We all should be concerned and upset over CWB policies, for there is no logical or economic reasons that they need to continue in the manner they now operate! My posting was meant to highlite this fact... Kasro... at least you understood!

This is the real essence of what "designated area" grain farmers are finally starting to understand...

And hats off to those farmers who have the opportunity to focus attention on the CWB...

by threatning to proceed to jail on Oct. 31st...

These jail bound farmers are really opening up this debate to the average Canadian... adding emphisis during the CWB elections

which is the requirement for real change to occur, isn't it?

[AdamSmith]

Hi Kasro,

My definition of a dual market is:

A free and open market system in which price pooling is among the many marketing options available to farmers.

[StrawBoss]

The CWB has to change to become an option for farmers and I think it can survive with minor changes. The biggest problem we have now is the board is too political and the big difference in population from east to west compounds the problem.

Exporting wheat to the USA is not the only problem with the CWB, but the board is limiting the marketing within Canada and dampens our opportunities for value added.

Also the younger farmers want more leisure time and to accomplish that they need better opportunities to market their products to make more money. This could bankrupt some, but you will never fail or improve if you don’t try.

This is not any different in the labour place where the more aggressive people become supervisors, and some are content just staying as labourers. I think farming is the same, do you just want to survive or prosper.

Shutting down the CWB may seem like closing down a factory with union people being laid off, we also know the unions are set up to protect some workers that are incompetent and lazy. To rectify that problem we need competition to force people to be productive and keep the factory profitable.

CWB employees have no real incentive to change and with no competition why should they. I know the CWB could survive in the open market system and to their employees I say, start earning you wages or your gone and to the directors ( farmers) stay as farmers and not become politician over night and forget what you got elected to do.

If we like it or not farming is a worldwide business, so today’s farmer has to be a good manager to produce the products the consumer wants and market in the competitive world.

Lets start saying we can live and prosper with change.

[les]

Parsley

I wish I did know how to delete the wheat board from all our lives.What I am doing to delete the C.W.B. from my life is that I have not grown any crop that I need to sell through the wheat board in the last five or six years.
I will add too that i have made more money this way than when I grew wheat and malting barley for the board.

[ianben]

The dual market we had with the MMB was as some of you propose here.

One day it had a monopoly the next it did not and each individual decided to stay with it or find a new way.

Our MMB failed this test and with hindsight was bound too.

It need some time and reorganisation to transform from the monoply into a real dynamic marketing body which valued its customers and clients.

So the best solution where MMB was the market leader actually getting premium prices and giving a premium service has been lost.

Given a chance perhaps the MMB could have changed into a succesful marketing co-operative which farmers used from choice.

What we did with with a dual system was the same as if we had a dual system on the road.

You drive on the right, we drive on the left.

No good reason for one or the other.

Both work.

A dual system?

GRIDLOCK!!!

[eatmorewheat]

Ianben

One question

Did any Brit milk farmer go to jail for marketing his own property around the royal mmb?

Canadian lads died over southern England in the summer of 1940 to stand with you for FREEDOM. Please support the oppressed farmers of 2002 as we supported you in 1940 - 45. They too fight for freedom.

Free wheat in the west.