Shorts

[jensend]

i feel like i'm talking to yoda. when you find that market for twenty-five dollar barley let me know (you don't have to share specifics, i'll take your word for it) but please let me know how big a volume it is and how long it lasts. i started talking about sustainability and get called (of course) a socialist and depressing and whatever else. i'll quit mocking you now but c.p. has it pretty much right. if you want to avoid some of the issues facing the industry i'll back off. mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

[parsley]

Your words jensend:

"it seemed to me when i was grainfarming i was always trying to sell product to mostly lower income countries" piqued my curiosity.

I am a little slow, jensend, so perhaps I'll reverse the 2 questions to make them clearer:

Which product? Which countries?

Parsley

Since you no longer farm, you will have the time to answer.

[jensend]

i don't grain farm anymore but that was never our only enterprise anyway. remember when canada targetted sales of grains to china and india before they were on their way to becoming economic powerhouses. what did we get for malt barley sold to china? seems to me that was a market of last resort and not very lucrative. india never was regarded as a premium market either. i am glad to see grain farmers having not a good but a great year; we all know the equity that has been lost over the last decade especially. i raised the issue of the future and you and your acolytes want to jump all over me so be it. doesn't mean the issues won't have to be dealt with. you haven't addressed those issues, you just haul out the old socialist label right away. i can assure you that you have not figured me out at all; i would suspect i have travelled more than you give me credit for and i have been educated in a couple of different professional fields and i started buying land and farming almost forty years ago. there, now you know more than you did - want to address the issue of price sustainability and how primary producers can capture an equitable portion of the profit in the value chain? clue - the cwb is only a minor part of the problem.

[parsley]

Ahhh.......so when you claimed:

"it seemed to me when i was grainfarming i was always trying to sell product to mostly lower income countries"

what you REALLY meant to say was:

"it seemed to me when i was grainfarming **the CWB*** was always trying to sell product to mostly lower income countries"

Different discussion altogether, jensend.

1. My point has always been that farmers are interested in their farms to make money for themselves, and their families.

The CWB is interested in only THEMSELVES.

Parsley

[jensend]

divert to the cwb all you want, that was where the market was at the time or do you know better. now address the issues i brought up.

[parsley]

Price sustainability for the producer has not been maintained in the present Government marketing system of wheat and barley, hence the urgent need for change.

CHANGE.



We cannot go down that path you complain about, jensend.

Hence I want change.

Parsley

[jensend]

blah blah blah cwb blah blah blah

[silverback]

That was very mature J.

Going back to your first post here, the only thing I can take from it is that you feel that having higher prices is a bad thing. Is that correct?

Or are you saying that it would be better if prices are to rise that they only rise a little bit? Who will decide the proper level of price increase?

I am not sure you are watching at the moment since you are not a producing farmer, but the world price for wheat and barley is way higher than what our forced pooling masters think we should receive. I guess this fact makes you happy?

Do you believe that a farmer in ND that is going to be able to sell his wheat at the highest price in generations is doomed to be blasted out of existence because he captured those high prices?

Do you think it is better to have long term debt sitting on the books and not getting paid off in a really good year?

I also don't understand how you can argue that asking small, poorer countries to actually pay the world price for grain is a bad thing? Funny how they are managing to pay for it right now. Do you favor asking different prices in different countries for the same wheat? Who actually gets to decide if that is good policy for the farmers who produced it? If we sold wheat to China and India 15 years ago at less than market value was that smart? They seem to be doing pretty good right now, maybe they will pay more than market value this year if we ask nicely.

[parsley]

Paraphrase from your words:

1. Grain was never your enterprize.

2. You don't farm anymore.

Yet, you seem eager to defend single desk marketing. Hmm.

You remind me of that agrologist from BC who pops up at every meeting all over the country/in every newspaper, constantly spouting the CWB mantra.

Time could be well-spent if there is a pool-account dollar beckoning.

Parsley

[Hopperbin]

Canola went vertical down this morning.
Not closed yet but creeping up a bit.
Sorta makes the farmers nervous if one has lots to price yet. Is it just a blip? Could easily gain or lose a couple dollars per bushel at the momment.

[TOM4CWB]

Jensend,

You said;

"what did we get for malt barley sold to china? seems to me that was a market of last resort and not very lucrative."

I well remember app. 10 years ago... the comments being made... you recite now.

I also recall folks from Alberta finding out that malt barley was being sold at around $10/bu US in China... when they were on sales trips there selling special crops.

The CWB was returning $3.50 for the highest quality product on the planet to the farm gate. They begged him to try to sell barley outside the CWB... to try to short circuit CWB jaw breaking discounts that disrupted their markets.

Markets are driven by perception...

1.) COst is King... in driving pricing... and the CWB has no cost base to drive the market higher! 60% of nearby market value is not a cost base... it is a gift. (Perspective would say it is a theft)

2.) What incentive is there to do the extra work, sweat and grind the buyer... when there is no financial incentive for salespeople to drive the price higher!

3.) The true value potential of a marketing system can only be achieved... if all participants are voluntary... especially on the supply side.

Any " grain buyer " could have bought their grain supply from some other marketer than the CWB... any time... and the CWB is all too aware of this fact!

[jensend]

parsley you either have troubles understanding what you read or you are incapable of reading. i have said on this board a few times i think the cwb has to go but i have never said it with this obsessive religious fervour you use to demonstrate your hatred of the board. you're the one who always introduces the cwb into the discussion. you must have some unresolved issues.

[parsley]

First you say:

"at ten or fifteen dollar wheat who can stand the risk of trying to produce with weather variables and inflating costs?

Read that for yourself. You wrote it!

And then you raised the issue of price sustainability. Do you want prices to rise or fall or stay the same? Maybe you don't know, yourself.

You seem to be an ex-farmer who wants the same-old, same-old ag-blankie to lug from thread to thread.

Farmers cannot move forward successfully and profitably until they look at where they have been and examined what that path has garnered for them.

I say it's time to move on. There is only one wheat/barley player who is totally dispensible. And THAT remains an unresolved issue.

Parsley

[jensend]

i raised two issues: sustainable price levels in the greater economy and the effects of inflation on the economics of farming. you turned it into your ususal rant about socialism and the cwb and made your usual overreaching and erroneous conclusions. you want to talk about the cwb - fine. i have a cwb question: if your cause is so just and you're so obviously right why haven't you rid the world of the cwb? don't blame the evils and shortcomings of others just tell me why you have failed. i think you'd rather just fight than win otherwise you'd have had it wrapped up by now but let's hear your excuses.

[parsley]

From your nuances, you are critical of the fluctuations of the open market.

Either you accept fluctuation, {I'll borrow the word bungying from this morning's post, (isn't it wonderfully appropos?)}or else the alternate is to advocate management averaging. Your musings seem to indicate your prefernce for the latter.

All of a sudden, you want to avoid explaining what it is you you advocate, but somehow, I am not surprised at your reaction.

There is no doubt jensend, that the shift AWAY from the CWB's single-desk, the CWB's control, the CWB's Government intervention in wheat and barley, is moving slowly. Slower than I would like.


But the fact is, it IS moving, this one-way tide AWAY from the Board, slowly picking up speed, with more and new players joining the sweep, not just farmers.

All of the converts have abandoned the concept that the CWB is there "just for farmers", and all have abandoned the concept that the CWB gets more money for farmers, and all have abandoned the concept that individual farmers are hopeless and helpless and cannot market without big Government breathing heavily.

The CWB themselves, have abandoned pooling. The initial significant abandonment of pooling was when they allowed all the feed mills in Canada to buy feedgrains at farmgate,bypass Board pooling and Board marketng, and export the feed.

While large corporations could buy feed grain for export and bypass the CWB, if the farmer kept that exactly same grain, the CWB deemed he was too incompetent to market it, and the Board demanded they buy it and then sell it for the farmer.

The CWB is a powerful institution, accessing farmers own money to fight against those farmers, to fight against any change.

The CWB employees/ ex-employees want to maintain the status quo. It benefits them greatly.

The CWB are funding, from Western Pooling Accounts.... scholarships, jobs, university department ventures, international trade agreeement costs, national licensing of all wheat and barley for all farmers and corporations, studies, research, foreign offices, and on and on.

Did you ever wonder why you should pay for the national licensing costs of wheat and barlley any more than you should pay for national federal election costs, or national gun-licensing costs if they were foisted on you, too?

If you were a benefactor of farmers' free money, you would fight against having your free money cut off. In subtle ways.

Farmers are the only ones in this scenario, who cannot make a living from growing wheat and barley.

It is why there must be change. I hope I live to see it.

Parsley