Getting the message out

[bucket]

I was working at a well known steel mill in regina ( now owned by Russians) last fall doing precision alignments and making 1000 buckaroos a day. Anywhoo I got to a talking to the millwrights that had come from newfoundland to bc to work on this project. They found out I was also a farmer and had a few questions.

Like - what are you going to do with all the money you get from the government and with the price of wheat up. Naturally my first response was would I be working here if that were true. That stunned them - they really hadn't thought about it that way. I went on to tell them I really did have better things to but I didn't have the money they were lead to believe farmers had.

Then I went on to explain over numerous coffee breaks the way I was forced to sell my grain. After they picked their jaws off the floor they said "that can't happen in Canada"

Yeah well it does. And Harper could end this nonsense if he had the balls to put the message into the public forum. Tell people they had to wait years for their salary and they would get the message pretty fast. Tell people to go get another job if they are not making enough and they get the message.

The millwrights understood it pretty darn quick. Farmers missed an opportunity to get the message out that technically we are slaves in western canada. I continue to tell everybody I meet about it.

I am getting the message out to nonfarmers - the ones that can make a difference to my future and not to flamans/hills/mcrearys/ritter etc by voting to get a conservative majority and end this.

The directors above all inherited their farms - a job to them was a hobby - they could quit and spend daddy's money anytime they felt like it. I am not bitter but I don't think it qualifies them either. If they would tell everyone about the buyback scheme for flaman and the fact they allow it to happen (like spoiled ones they are) they would have their asses kicked out quickly.

Better yet if the cwb is so great why is their message not getting out in queeeebec or Ontario. Why am I not pooling with a queeeebec farmer????


Which message do you want to have out there. I know what the average guy thinks and I know how little he knows about this cwb system.

And I knows what message I want out there.

[checking]

How many strong CWB supporters actually market their grain production through the single desk they seemingly so strongly support? I don't mean selling screenings or using the board as a last resort; or using the common grain farmer when it looks obvious that it is the best alternative in a depressed situation.
How many of these same supporting individuals have the personal confidence of officials and directors in the CWB? Remember almost everyone has their price. Some can be bought off with a cup of coffee or a compliment. Others may require more, and a few are really hard to please.....
My observation is that the common farmers (from those I encounter) are finding more and more reasons to ask for more marketing choices outside the CWB. Its not that economic problems will be surely be solved; heck even the CWB hasn't been able to accomplish that.
Its a combination of monopoly control (but selective with exemptions and loopholes and solid walls in other places) along with decades of little irritants such as a letter dated April 15 (just received in the mail ) giving a little over 3 weeks time to deliver a barley GDC contract. Some will have to worry about pressing seeding times; untimely snows or roads and yards that may be unpassable )in the spring. Thankfully the many loads were almost delivered before the letter was received; but I wonder if those in Winnipeg are aware of the real world.

[bucket]

Yeah, those annoying letters about delivering. Its funny when I was going to work last fall I phoned the cwb asking/begging them to let me haul some durum so that it was in. No contract calls. Now I get letters telling me to deliver in spring seeding with the threat of liquidated damages. Its idiotic.

How come when they only accept 60% of the durum there is no way damages are paid to the farmer for storage, interest,etc. Oh I remember we share such costs - its taken from revenue for the benefit of many.

I propose a system that when the cwb doesn't accept our grain - they can't charge liquidated damages in later years on the same crop because of their incompetence.

[cchurch]

Heres a good one:

Why doesn't Harper give supply managed farmers choice, especially in Ontario and Quebec?

[FarmRanger]

cchurch, are you suggesting that the >2/3 majority of farmers that voted for supply management in the first place would overturn that now? Such a vote never took place when the CWB was created, and if taken now, would be unlikely to achieve a 2/3 majority.

Supply management versus CWB
=
Apples versus Oranges (apples versus road apples?)