Chocolait Bars and Fertilizer

[winwin]

Whatever the most efficient size of the businesses are---has no effect on the price differential at the border.

The bloody border is just an artificial line drawn through the middle of the great plains.By who?

By government of course.And who wins when the ottawa govt is involved?10 times out of 10 Eastern Canada or some well connected interest.

Solution? As always.Fairness for the west comes from LESS govt.Less govt means no trade barriers.

[bgmb]

winwin,

If you read and understood what i said in the last part of my post

"In the case of the fertilizer industry where is appears we have a natural oligopoly we may unfortunately need the gov to step in and regulate the industry in order to stop collusion and price discrimination."

You would know the answer to our fert problem obviously isn't to open the boarder because the boarder is already open.

The industry is price discriminating, selling to USA cheaper than CDN. If I have to truck the fert back from ND that eats up most of my savings.

And as far as anhydrous is concerned is it really feasible to get serviced out of the USA, i know guys by the line who do it but I am too far north.

So I will say it again.... The government needs to step in and make the fert manufacturers sell to cdn dealers at the same lower price they are selling into the US market at.

[northfarmer]

I presume that the US retailers sourcing the product from Canada have options from where they source their product, and that the Candian supply they purchase is cost competitive to the other options.

Is it that the Canadian plants price discriminate because they can, they sell their excess capacity to US customers and kepot their captive Canadian market at a premium to maximize profits.

Why are we not properly abritraging this market if our borders are open?

Are not off shore urea products and off shore nitrogen making up half of N american demand. If so why are we not seeing more of this off shore product come into Canada and pressure the domestic Canadian product to an equilibrium with the northern US states?

Is it a logistics/freight issue? Is that the matter that needs to be tackled?

I am all for regulation if that is the only option. Will there ever be an expansion of nitrogen prodution in canada with the bubble burst on gas and our now relatively high utility costs?

In the US they use their barge system to move fert up to the midwestern plains, in Argentina and Brazil they back haul fert form the coastal ports after they have trucked their crops to the water. In Canada our rail car hoppers come back empty, and even then our cycle times are poor.