when does wheat become state property?

[eatmorewheat]

Does anyone know when wheat becomes property of the state in western Canada?

- in the seeder, sprouted, headed out, lodged, swathed, combined or in the bin?

- this is a very important legal question.

- the answer could be a breakthrough

Free wheat in the west

[wedino]

EMW, I'd say the second it's in the bin. Until then gov't doesn't give a damn about it. I treat it, plant it, spray it, spray it, harvest it, dry it, bin it. It's not until it's in the bin that gov't tells me to turn it over to them.

[les]

I say as soon as it is combined

[Everest]

My uneducated guess would be as soon as you sign a CWB contract. Until then, it is mine to do with what I like, except arrange and execute a sale to a domestic or foreign buyer. I can feed it to animals, dig a hole a bury it, store it until the next blue moon, burn it.....but cannot sell it to anyone except the CWB.

[Cockshutt]

It becomes CWB wheat (at least as far as the CWB policy makers are concerned) the moment it hits the combines hopper.

Until then it's the farmers responsibility. Once it hits the combine hopper it has become a marketable product.

[charliep]

Based on the assumption you can't sell something you don't own/plan on owning/growing (otherwise you are a speculator), the CWB assumes some ownership of farmers wheat when it first starts forward contracting sales in the spring prior to new crop harvest. If the CWB didn't assume some kind of ownership/guarantee to supplies, then it couldn't forward sell.

[TOM4CWB]

Charlie;

If grain was forward priced in the spring, the CWB has some right to be compensated if I don't deliver... in actual money lost because of the contract I signed with the CWB... but still no right to the grain till it is graded and delivered as the CWB Act requires.

This brings up the CWB pre-selling malt barley that they have no contracting program to insure supply to match pre sold grain.

The CWB has no right under the CWB Act to pre-sell grain they do not control or physically own.

Yet the CWB breaks the law and pre-sells grain they do not own or control, no wonder there is a big question in every one's mind WHEN the CWB has right to grain!

If anyone has specific info that can show, from the CWB Act, where the CWB gains control to sell grain they do not have any control over... or own, could they please post it?

[charliep]

Maybe the answer is what eatmorewheat was asking. Western Canadian farmers in reality grow wheat under contract with the CWB with ownership belowing to the board until the decision is made that it only grades as livestock feed and is sold in this market. Farmers are in fact growing wheat/barley under contract to the CWB with no ownership of the grain.

[parsley]

Just like the Canada Grains Act, the CWB Act is enacted under "trade and Commerce" and not "Agriculture". According to court precedent, farmer held grain is outside of CWB jurisdiction.

In Rex v. Manitoba Grain Company, Ltd. [1922], Manitoba Court of Appeal, Perdue, C.J.M. states:

"No doubt the term 'agriculture' must be given as wide a meaning as the word will naturally convey. It would no doubt, cover practical husbandry and tillage, the growing of crops, the planting and care of fruit trees, the rearing of domestic animals, the sciences applied to or bearing upon these subjects and perhaps the disposition of the products by the producer."

In the same case, Dennistoun, J.A. writes:

"Practical agriculture is an art comprehending all the labours of the field and of the farm yard , such as preparing the land for the reception of the seed or plants, sowing and planting, rearing and gathering the crops, care of fruit trees and domestic animals, disposition of products, etc."

In The King v. Eastern Terminal Elevator Co. [1925], Supreme Court Justice Mignault J. in concuring judgement states:

"I have not overlooked the appellant's contention that the statute [The Canada Grain Act] can be supported under section 95 of the British North America Act as being legislation concerning agriculture. It suffices to answer that the subject matter of the Act is not agriculture but a product of agriculture considered as an article of trade."

These precedents differentiate between "agriculture" and "trade and commerce". From this, grain in a farmer's bin is agriculture, and outside of the CWB's trade and commerce jurisdiction. When the farmer sells to the CWB, it then becomes an article of trade and commerce, which is the CWB's jurisdiction. However, the CWB probably has a legitimate claim on farmer held grain contracted or offered to the Board.