How do you define Commodity Marketing?

[parsley]

melvill,

In your posting yesterday, you were the one who quickly digressed into a "mine is the best religion debate" as you promptly launched into promoting your personal marketing philosophy. You tell farmers we must plan supply and manage ... essentially suppy management..... and even include organic grain You claim farmers dump their products and you intimate farmers don't know how to develop markets and you intimate they don't know how to promote their products.
You conclude by promoting supply management system run by experts.

What it amounts to is you really want this discussion to be about why supply management is so great, the same as thalpenny wanted to discuss the merits of the single desk, and why Vader pushes the merits of the monopoly. We've moved on. A growing number of farmers who have have completed the evaluation are looking for alternatives. Farmers aren't little kids who have to be led by the hand.

Many farmers have endured the single desk since 1947 and that span has provided them with experience, hindsight, and proof and wisdom. They don't want more of the same.

And more than that, they want people in the industry , melvill, to recognize what a single desk can end up doing. End up being. We understand why those on CWB payroll don't want a thing changed. ianben can smell them out an ocean away.

While you are trying to gloss over what a monopoly can do FOR farmers , you are not recognizing what in fact, it has done TO farmers. Not criminals but ordinary farmers living in rural communities in the West. The system you promote in this thread , the system you want farmers to continue to support, jails ordinary good people for selling what they grow. Jails them, fines them, humiliates them, intimidates them, alienates them. I'd appreciate if you would think about that for a day before you make a response.

Parsley

[TOM4CWB]

Parsley;

Your comments are those of a wounded person, a person who has been hurt by those we are supposed to be able to trust...

This is the essence of why the Standing committee determined and implored the CWB to allow marketing choice.

Unfortunately, the CWB made these recomendations into a threat for the CWB...
Rather than an opportunity for the CWB to grow and become stronger by meeting more of commercial farmers needs.

Vader and Thalpenny;

When all the communist theory is done, and the CWB has been destroyed, won't we all be sorry we did not meet the needs of those we are supposed to serve?

And was this not the reason behind the parliamentary Committee's recomendations? MEET FARMERS NEEDS???

[AdamSmith]

When you remove all the overburden and get to the bedrock, commodity marketing with respect to grains is nothing more than selling grain.

Pretty basic stuff actually, everything else is just hype.

And by the looks of it Vader you have bought into the CWB hype big time. The free interaction between buyers and sellers is the ultimate definition of a marketplace and with that definition, anyone who buys or sells within that marketplace is a marketer and the action of buying or selling is marketing.

The big wordy explanations and definitions are for suckers who think that there is more to selling grain than there actually is. They must of seen Vader coming a mile away because he seems to have bought what the CWB is selling, and they weren’t selling wheat that day I'll tell ya.

[AdamSmith]

Vader

You are either and CWB employee or a single desk supporting director.

If none of the above you are easily brainwashed by the CWB propaganda.

The CWB has a place in our marketing system but maybe it should be reduce to promoting Canadian grain and oilseeds and not actually selling the product. Maybe all the checkoffs we have now for each individual commodity could be channelled into a CWB like organization to promote Canadian agriculture world wide.

The CWB is in an awful rut and refuses to follow their mandate and refuses to progress to the future of agriculture and that is value-added industry within Western Canada.

[Steve]

Tom4CWB

You asked Vader why you called yourself “Vader” and I ask you why you call yourself Tom4CWB? If I recall correctly you said on of the threads that you would fight the CWB to your last breath.

[Steve]

Steve are you done golfing for the year or have you finally lost all your balls and can't go anymore. Tom4cwb is a tongue in cheek name.

I'am glad your back Steve and am looking forward to you adding some positive insight into how wheat and barley should be marketed by us farmers who have not retired yet.

I would like some marketing choices that look past the hood of the ordinary farm truck.

[TOM4CWB]

Steve;

You are right that I will fight ...injustice... and ...corruption... to my last breath at the CWB, and so should every other person who actually needs the CWB in the future.

TOM4CWB comes from the 2000 election, when I ran to be a CWB Director in CWB District 4.

Steve, if you need to, you can call me toll free 1-866-866-4292, if you live in SK. or AB.

I am VERY serious that the CWB must follow the CWB Act, and stop beating up on those farmers who are not the "think alike" type, for innovation and creativity needs to be encouraged and fostered, and beating up those who try the hardest is counter productive.

A voluntary CWB becomes harder each day to acheive, because every day mistrust and frustration is chipping away the foundation that remains for a viable reliable CWB in 5 years.

It seems that for all except Jim Chatenay, the CWB Directors have a death wish for the long term viability of a voluntary CWB.

The Majority of CWB Directors would rather destroy the CWB than have it be proven that a voluntary CWB is viable and in farmers and All Canadians best interests!

And it seems to me that every day the CWB Directors extend this death wish for the CWB, becomes a day closer to the point of no return... the day when the CWB is useless and must be dismantled... which means I must fight harder each day to expose CWB corruption, in order to give the CWB a chance to survive.

Does this make my position crystal clear Steve?

[melvill]

Parsley, again that gauntlet has been thrown down and I accept by first asking question.

1) You said that I promote my marketing philosophy. I challenge you, how do you know what my market philosophy is? As far as I can figure out we've never met, either one-to-one or in a group.

2) I have been doing farm marketing extension (teaching, coaching, urging cagoling) to farm managers since 1986. In that time I've met and talked with and taught and spoken to and coached hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of farm managers. My experience is that a majority could significantly improve their farm income by doing a better job of marketing what they produce. I don't care what market they want or prefer to use - Board or non-Board - as long as they improve. I stand firmly by the statement.

3) My only bias is the one mentioned above 2) above. I am very passionate in my belief that farm managers can dramantically improve their incomes by improving their marketing knowledge and skills. My livelihood comes from teaching and helping farm managers improve their marketing skills. In that vein, my self-interest could easily be that if the Board disappears that would mean there would be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people would would need my services to learn how to better market wheat and malt barley. I could easily have employment for two lifetimes.

4) My uncle, who farmed and is now deceased, had heard that I had been teaching courses to farmers in the Valleyview area about the futures market and basis and why it very was important to understand those two concepts. His comment was that my grandfather would "turn over in his grave if he knew what I was doing". He further said that if I really wanted to help farmers I'd work toward getting all farm crops under the Board. He was strongly supported by two other farmers sitting at the table - one from Manning and one from somewhere near Barrhead. The other two suggested that they'd phone their MLA questioning why a government employee was undermining "the farmer's organization".

So, parsley, why if I'm such a strong supporter of supply management, would I be getting a dressing down from a relative and two other farmers.

My personal marketing philosophy is that farmers must be very good businessmen. That means they must be astute marketers just like any other successful business person. Farm managers can't just be producers and "sell" their products. They must market them.

[parsley]

Glad to hear that you are in support of farmers marketing what they grow and working towards it, and no we have never met, melville!

When you began with "in my experience", and then talked about supply and manage, though, and about farmers dumping their products and not knowing how to develop markets or to promote their products,it seemed to be setting the mood for thalpenny to top up the session with the merits of the single desk.

By gosh, melvill, I think I tried to shut the gate before you got through, so I guess I'm in trouble.

Parsley

[melvill]

Good morning, Parsley. When you took a whole day to answer my post, I thought that either he/she is 'travelling in a container or organic wheat to somewhere or maybe the epistle I wrote to you lesf you speechless. Wrong, wrong, wrong! If you were in a container you'd have a wireless computer. Speechless? Never. (Gosh I hope you have a sense of humour.)

I think that if, you reread the subject of your ire, you will see that I said "astute commodity marketing is a planned and carefully managed process". And it is, whether the product is durum or canola or purebred bulls or backgrounded calves. It requires careful planning and management beginning at the first step of the production process. I've always argued (somewhat with tongue in cheek) that the bull that a cow-calf producer chooses to use is the first marketing decision for the next calf crop. The 2004 canola marketing year begins if/when chemicals exclusively for canola are applied this fall. Surely those two examples are part of the planning and management process.

Now I'm going to challenge you one more time. (Please have a horse in my funeral procession!) If the Board were to disappear, there will be winners and losers. Some farms, maybe quite a few, will inevitably suffer a reduction in income until they adjust or until they choose to or are forced to leave the industry. Some farms, operated by astute marketers have a competitive advantage. They will likely experience an increase in income.

Farming is all about competitiveness. Astute marketers have a competitive edge. I would argue it's significant.