Off to a Parlimentary vote----Please respond

[chaffmeister]

More on real data…..

See http://www.cwb.ca/public/en/hot/future/task/#response2

In part the CWB presented the following to the task force:

<i>The CWB estimates that grain handling companies have charged almost 40 per cent more in basis than their actual handling costs. If the same handling companies had the ability to do the same for wheat, durum and barley, farmers' costs would increase by almost $8 per tonne or $145 million annually (based on a 5-year average of 18 million tonnes marketed through the CWB and handling costs of $19.34 per tonne). </i>

The first line says it all. <i> The CWB estimates that grain handling companies have charged almost 40 per cent more in basis than their actual handling costs.</i>

Whoever wrote this and whoever approved this for presentation to the Task Force and for public consumption do not understand how grain is handled, traded or anything about how the grain system works. <b>NOT AT ALL. NADA. ZIP.</b>

They assume the elevator’s handling and cleaning tariffs registered with the CGC are the company’s costs. <b>They’re not. They have absolutely nothing to do with costs - or fees for that matter.</b>

They assume that the basis is what they charge. <b>It’s not. Not even close.</b>

This demonstrates a frightening lack of knowledge of the system in which they operate. What’s worse is that Adrian Measner, as ex-CEO, was presenting this to farm groups and whoever else would listen – as if it was gospel.

Even those at the very top don’t get it.

Scary indeed.

[tower]

posted Aug 3, 2007 17:25
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


"tower, there in a nutshell, is why the cwb has to go, they see the buyers and the users of the grain we grow (the multinationals) not to mention our domestic grain companies, as the enemy.

It's like Stronach at Magna, seeing GM,Ford and Chryler as the enemy."

Perhaps that is true, if Belinda did feel that way, ie that the grain companies, the railroads are competition for the farm share of the consumers food dollar. And I expect the Stronach clan does its best to cut into the profits of the bloated and bureaucratic automotive parts manufacturers.

I would expect the cwb does the same when trying to manoeuve through the grain trade.

Farmers don't need protection from the buyers of grain? What has changed since the wheat pools were established? The pools themselves have been swallowed up by the companies that they were formed to compete with because those companies were ripping off the farmers.

Ya, a little farmers controlled protection is a good thing.

[tower]

Chaffmeister, So you think that the only way there can be choice is if you don't want to deal with the board at all. If that is the case then why do you suppose the gov't in its wisdom presented it as a three way plebiscite, perhaps so that the naysayers out there could spin the results to show that farmers don't want the board?

But unfortunately the numbers work better the other way. More people want the board than don't and by a significant margin.

The trouble with the barley market isn't that we have a thin line between us and the multinationals, who incidentally are making pretty handsome profits buying and moving and cleaning and drying and elevating and marketing our grain, but that the price of grain is too low for the input costs we have to put into growing the stuff. Input costs which also coindentally provide pretty handsome profits to many of those same corporations.

[wilagro]

Well said Tower. What a nice breath of fresh air to read sensible discourse in this forum of radicals.

[AdamSmith]

"...but that the price of grain is too low for the input costs we have to put into growing the stuff."

Why let the facts, even as glaring as they are, get in the way of a good theory, eh tower.

The open market was going to provide good prices for feed and for malt barley. $4 - $4.5 for malt, $3.5 -$3.75 for feed.

The board's prices are $1.13 for feed (Alberta Initial, and malt $1.94 or less (Alberta initial).

Words (false words at that) are the only things you guys at the cwb can offer,

You bitch about the low prices and when they actually improve, you guys applaud the return of low prices?

Pathetic!

[chaffmeister]

Tower – Please don’t twist my words – if I wasn’t clear and/or you didn’t understand, just say so. It’s very important to be clear about the difference between <b>The CWB</b> and <b>The Single Desk</b>.

I did not say “the only way there can be choice is if you don't want to deal with the board at all”. I said if you want <b>The Single Desk</b> you vote for the status quo. If you want <b>CHOICE</b>, that is <b>NO SINGLE DESK</b>, then you vote for either of the other two vote options.

Please don’t muddy the waters by trying to make this a debate about the CWB. This debate is about <b>The Single Desk</b>. It may be convenient for pro-CWB people to talk of them as exactly the same, but they’re not.


You suggest <i>More people want the board than don't and by a significant margin. </i>

Afraid you can’t say that from the plebiscite results – or from the CWB’s own surveys. All you can say is that the majority of people want <b>CHOICE</b> and by a significant margin. Choice may or may not include the CWB – depends on who you talk to. To say that farmers that voted for choice including the CWB (option #2) want the CWB, is not just trying to spin the message your way, it’s downright twisting it.

Your misinformed comment about grain companies’ profits tells me you haven’t looked at the Grain Monitor data that I suggested. If you did, you’d see that grain companies are not making what you think they are on non-CWB grains like canola.

Let's avoid debating in circles based on philosophy and from-the-tummy rhetoric. There is real evidence of what the CWB is costing and how it performs in the market. The CWB's own numbers. You and wilagro are wasting everyone's time by avoiding it. The truth often hurts, but you can't fix something unless you know what you're talking about.

You can't manage what you don't measure. And if you disregard the measurements that are there for you, you're not managing at all.

[kamichel]

The Wheat Board and Monopoly are two different things. That is a very common among CWB supporters and voters that voting for the monopoly was voting for the Board. Just some history among the first years of CWB operation, they did not have a monopoly. When world prices were good everyone delivered through the grain traders prices. When the world prices were down and the CWB had an initial price higher than the trade, all the farmers put their grain through the CWB. Fortunately for the CWB every year that the farmers gave their grain through the CWB system they never made the initial payment back from the market. Costing the federal government unpressidented amounts of money for the times. Solution was to give the CWB monopoly power. Seemed to appear to work for a while since world prices were high for a while. Many times the initial price was lower than the overall grain marketted for the year. The government always bailed them out. These days the initial is so low that it is impossible not to get it from the market.

[tower]

Chaffmeister said"
Did you know the plebiscite was about CHOICE – not about the CWB as an institution. When you say 86% voted to have the choice of dealing with the board, that’s a misrepresentation based on a misunderstanding. If you want the “choice” of the CWB, you vote for the status quo – the single desk. The ONLY reason to vote otherwise is that you don’t want the SINGLE DESK – you want CHOICE. "

You can say that in capital letters all you want. That doesn't make it true. A farmer might vote to have the choice of delivering to the board. If the process of making choice available to farmers negates the option of delivering to the board, then we as farmers have lost one of our choices. If I lose that choice then all I am left with is dealing with the multinationals like ADM.



I think that for farmers who voted to have the choice of delivering their barley to the CWB there needs to be a CWB marketing barley. If they have to become a grain company to survive and compete I don't need that I already have a number of those.

Take ADM for example, averaging $1.5 billion in net income per annum. Take a look at the following and count the number of times it is stated that the company would have done better but grain prices went up for a short spell and that ADM is counting on rising profits due to lower grain prices again.

http://boston.stockgroup.com/sn_newsreleases.asp?symbol=adm&newsid=8880141

I don't remember anything from the CWB that said the board would do better if there were lower grain prices.

[TOM4CWB]

kamichel,

Clearly the "SIngle Desk" did not start until 1993, when Goodale created it... then with his Order in COuncil in 1996 he made sure the Agents of the CWB could maintain and continue to steal from what turns out to be billions from wheat/barley growers in the "designated area" after the Dave Sawatsky ruling. We are into 11 years of this obsene confiscation scheme. NOT 70 years... 14 years.

Grain growers from the "designated area" were allowed to by pass the CWB with their own produce grown on their own farm before 1993... seed being the primary system used to attain no-cost exort licenses into the human consumption markets of the world.

[kamichel]

http://www.admworld.com/

ADM will make more profits by lower grain prices because the lions share of their business is in processing. Not just as a grain trader. It is good to have the extra competition of ADM as a buyer here, although I would not count them very high on my prefered places of delivery.

[silverback]

How about I decide who gets to buy my product by letting me decide which company has the best price to me.

I don't really care if a company makes 20 billion dollars profit in a year. If they are offering a price higher than the cwb can give me, they will get to buy my grain. If the cwb is higher, they will get it.

That evil word "profit" from the cwb zombies keeps popping up.

[chaffmeister]

Tower comments in italics:

<i>A farmer might vote to have the choice of delivering to the board. </i>
Yes. That would be the status quo – keeping things just the way they are (Option #1 on the plebiscite). Yes, indeed – that would be a choice.
But don’t confuse Option #2 with a vote for the status quo – because its not. Voting for option #2 is a vote to get rid of the single desk but have provisions for the CWB to continue to participate in the barley market.

<i>If the process of making choice available to farmers negates the option of delivering to the board, then we as farmers have lost one of our choices.</i>
I agree. You would have lost one option. But that’s all you’ve lost.
(I’m not against the CWB, I’m against the Single Desk and everything that goes with it.)

<i>If I lose that choice then all I am left with is dealing with the multinationals like ADM. </i>
Even with the CWB single desk, your grain still gets sold to ADM. If you think you do better with the CWB selling to ADM, so be it. Remember the data I showed you? Still haven’t looked at it, have you?

<i> I think that for farmers who voted to have the choice of delivering their barley to the CWB there needs to be a CWB marketing barley.</i>
I agree. Someone should tell the CWB.

<i> If they have to become a grain company to survive and compete I don't need that I already have a number of those. </i>
You’re only listening to the CWB. Others have explained quite clearly that the CWB could be a viable marketing agency in a choice market. And it wouldn't be another grain company.

<i>Take ADM for example …… the company would have done better but grain prices went up for a short spell and that ADM is counting on rising profits due to lower grain prices again. </i>
Yes – buyers (consumers) of commodities do better when prices are lower. Just like sellers (producers) of commodities do better when prices are higher. This is true with or without the CWB Single Desk. I hope you don't think that the CWB keeps ADM from making money because if you do, we should start a whole new thread to go into that one.

More pertinent to the discussion is the value of the CWB Single Desk relative to its cost. Take a look at the Grain Monitor’s Report and Section 5 of the Sparks Study (as I’ve directed you to already). If logic and open-mindedness prevails, you will see that your costs are higher with a CWB system and sales performance is below average – truly a double whammy. This may be acceptable to you but I don’t understand why anyone would demand others to accept it.


Do you expect the CWB to provide a financial benefit to your farm? If so, how that’s working for you? (After you take a look at the data.)