50 village idiots

[AllisWD45]

Thank God our drama teacher doesn't care. In the words of his father "why should i sell your wheat"

[bucket]

Naive me thought when the cwb was gone we would have an open transparent market that could bring good threads to this forum.

Not so.

This is not much different than what we had if you looked at it objectively.

What's the difference between an old board contract that only accepted 50 percent ... compared to a new contract with a grainco that puts off delivery for months and in doing so caps the market.

With the crop from 2015, the weather and a working transportation system every elevator should be calling for grain.

The system isn't moving 500000 tonnes a week and people think this is a functioning market?

There is probably 1.5 mmt of boats floating out west waiting for product with terminals with 30 percent or more space.

Now add in the fact Churchills capacity has to be moved to other points and the graincos and railways have another excuse as to why they can't get it moved.

[agstar77]

What did you expect ? The free market only works if there is open competition. There is no competition in transport because of the duopoly of the rails . There is not open competition in the grain marketing and handling because of the barrier of entry. So what's left? Competition among grain growers for inputs. This leads to amalgamation of farm units. The net result will be an ever larger agricultural corporate structure and increased vertical integration.

[jamesb]

Is the post CWB system perfect ? No way!

Do most farmers want to go back to the CWB? No way !
If a group of farmers want to pool their grain, fine by me but count me out. I have and want the right do with my property (grain) as I see fit. Honestly I cant believe we are still having this discussion about the CWB. If changes had been made to improve the CWB 25 years ago, we would still have it. Supply managed commodities are going by the wayside the world over and the CWB is no different.

[stonepicker]

And yet my profit margin on wheat is better now than when we had the --- hmm.

[riders2010]

Neither extremes work. Don't need the old pooling but that system did put constraints on the private grain companies. So basically the side effects of the cwb are what we really lost. Example nearly all terminals bought wheat and now only certain ones do. The wheat board was not transparent in how prices were arrived at but now it's the same thing. Grain co s are writing their own cheques. Smaller farmers will be at a greater disadvantage as this goes forward.

[FarmRanger]

Ironically Agstar has it correct with his statement <i> "There is no competition in transport because of the duopoly of the rails " </i>
A big difference between than and now is that it's not just farmers who must keep their product off the rails. The previous masking of the lack of capacity no longer exists because there is no "orderly marketer" keeping one product (wheat) off the rails so others can ship more.

[bucket]

This highlights that the infrastructure in this country is falling behind.

Everyone including myself say we are in a downturn but what a great time to take advantage of resources to build for the the eventual upturn.

Do we really want 1997 that happened with the cwb in place or 2013 in an open market environment. ... to happen again?

Since the railways are doing pretty good with their arrogant business acumen... maybe a case can be made to start a third railway.

No one wants to tackle open running rights as a more efficient solution.

[wmoebis]

Riders do you think it will get better or worse with the new classes of wheat coming.

Maybe only certain elevators will take certain classes at certain times due to risk of contamination and sales opportunities.

I have seen IP canola tie up elev space for months just to cover contracts and waiting for sales.

[farmaholic]

Has focus truly been lost?

A system initially set up to serve it's customers seems to have forgot.