Ethanol Strategy... do we have one?

[ianben]

Charliep: Over a period of 10 years how much taxpayer money has been used to prop. up Alberta Crop Insurance pay outs, over an above farmer premiums.

We always talk about taxpayer support but I never ever hear how much it is from year to year other than I heard last year we had a 400 million dollar surplus in the fund in Alberta. Do we average a high support from year to year.

[TOM4CWB]

Kernel;

Farmers fund about 40% of the cost with the feds and province picking up the rest...

2002 was the first year in recent history that the reserve funds were tapped out... and gov reinsurance funds had to be accessed to make payments owing on all Liabilities for 2002.

For a number of years interest income from the C.I. reserve was credited to the provincial consolidated revenue fund... with some recent years having C.I. premiums reduced because of interest revenue.

Kernel I was reading in the JD furrow about burning grain... $1.00/4L of propane is worth 5.00/bu corn...

Shouldn't we be able to do better than we are... just burning our grain?

And maybe... we could produce organic P and K fertiliser from the ashes left over...

It would certainly bypass the CWB!

[ianben]

Tom
You are beginning to sound like me. I rabbit on how we should know the value our commodities have as energy source.

I sometimes struggle to see how free exports of your wheat to US will improve wheat prices for us all. After all they are hardly short of wheat are they?

But energy that is different. Some people claim Iraq is all about oil supplies to US and not weapons of mass destruction. N Korea?

Your energy hungry neighbour will take your oil and gas and pay well for a product which flows at little cost trough pipelines and across borders with ease.Perhaps a fact of increasing importance with new rules and regulations about to be implemented.

Subsidise corn/wheat burning boilers install then along side existing heating systems giving users option to switch when wheat prices are competative with fossil fuel.

Go for a dual market food and energy instead of CWB and freedom.

If I get to visit Edmonton again I would love to find the West Edmonton mall famous for being not just the largest shopping centre in the world but the first to be heated by wheat.

Wheat supplied from local farmer Tom4CWB

With the drive and determination you have Tom I believe you could make it happen.

[TOM4CWB]

Ianben;

I have shipped to the US... simply because the marketing system there gives fair value...

However... if the CWB were doing it's job even close to as well as the competitive US system... we would not need to ship south... because our Canadian grain handling system from Alberta to west coast Vancouver or Prince Rupert... has a major competitive advantage in lower cost than shipping costs in the eastern PNW states.

There would be no doubt that burning #1CWRS wheat would be a crime (to me morally)... but high yeilding biomass crops would obviously be more efficient for producing heat and power... and could be developed to fill an energy market.

Obviously Germany is at least 10 years ahead of us... and you folks are about 5 years... we have much catching up to do!

The CWB must still be fixed... and since fixing it is my job... you know the rest!

[TOM4CWB]

Tom thanks for the answer but its not quite what I wanted to find out. I wanted to see some numbers so I could compare to what is being paid out in other add hock programs. And would the better crop ins. save the governments money.

[TOM4CWB]

Kernel;

Really a good question...

FIDP has been paying out between 95-150mil/year... possibly 200mil for 2002

Acreage payments between 300-400mil/year...

Crop insurance has been 150-375mil until 2002 02 itself is said to be about 750mil

How exactly the new NISA ties into all this is rather difficult to tell yet... except that we are expected to put about 15% of our gross margin into NISA... to get the other 85% coverage... Charlie might help more on this...

It looks like Crop Insurance premiums will be up somewhere near 60% for all the new bells and whistles...

So if typically we spend 300mil on Crop insurance... we farmers will now be required to put in close to $480mil... farmer's share... for full package coverage.

How this will translate into more coverage back to the farm gate is yet to be seen...

Pretty soon gov. risk management programs will be our biggest single expence for our farm!

[ianben]

TOM
Why is it morally better to depress world prices selling grade one wheat at below its value as a fuel?

Would this really happen if lower grades where burnt and taken out of the food chain?

Removing land into biomasss production is long term and totally dependant on energy market. This could put food supply at risk if low production years occur around the world.

Would this be morally more acceptable?

[TOM4CWB]

Ianben;

Good questions...

Being good stewards, of the resources we are privileged to control, demands hard questions be asked...

[TOM4CWB]

Ianben: Your statement: Why is it morally better to depress world prices selling grade one wheat at below its value. That is a prefectly good question to ask our CWB monopoly single desk seller of wheat and barley. They must have the moral answer because they depress the world market pricing mechanism to a lower value ever time they cherry pick their way around the world price. They are dumping grain on to the world market to gain market share and that is what the USA farmer is so upset about.

[TOM4CWB]

Tom: we might need to clarify some figuires but from what your fiquires say the government could give us a better coverage then we had last year at the same premium or less and save $400 million a year over a 10 year period. If they dropped all the other add hock programs.

I think it is time farmers were required to produce crop imput receipts before collecting on their insured coverage. This would remove a great deal of the fraud that accompanies crop insurance at this time. I'am not saying a farmer should make money on insurance but give him the capability to cover his input cost. But I guess that would be politically incorrect to some people. But in the end it would give us better coverage at a smaller premium. After all this is about making the system better not making it easier to farm for the fat of the land type welfare farmers.

There I go again being politically incorrect.