National Post
30th June, 2008
Editorials
by Lorne Gunter
The CWB's phony numbers game
One statistic concerning the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) has always caused me wry amusement. When I first began covering the country's collectivist grain merchant more than a decade ago, it claimed to represent more than 120,000 farmers on the prairies. Today it boasts just 75,000.
The amusing part is that this decline undermines the board's central argument for its own worth -- namely that there is strength in numbers; all prairie wheat and barley farmers must be lashed to the board's mast together or, as individuals, they would surely sink.
But in just under 15 years, the number of farmers with permit books -- the licenses they need to sell their grain to the government, and only the government -- has fallen by almost half. If there is so much strength in numbers, how come farmers can be permitted to stop growing the grains that the wheat board markets?
Seriously. When I first argued that the board should be voluntary, there were nearly 120,000 farmers pooling their wheat together under the CWB's "single-desk" selling model. I said, even if a quarter of them chose to market outside the board, that would still leave 90,000, more than enough to provide the strength through unity the board argued was essential.
At the time, board supporters and PR types insisted 90,000 wouldn't do the trick. For their system to work, it had to include all 120,000.
Over the intervening years, tens of thousands of farmers have left to grow non-board crops, such as oats, beans, flax and so on. Some have left farming altogether because the board wouldn't free them to sell independently the wheat or barley they grew on their own land, with their own labour, using their own resources. All that's left is 75,000 growers, far fewer than the 90,000 I was told a decade ago was too few to keep the board viable.
Yet, still the board insists there is no room for farmers to sell their wheat except through the CWB.
It's clear, then, the board has no idea what number of farmers is needed to keep it viable, and equally clear the number of farmers shackled to it doesn't matter to the board. What matters -- as it does to all bureaucratic, central-planning agencies -- is control and survival. The board is not interested in maximizing return to farmers as much as it interested in maintaining its iron grip over prairies grain sales and, thereby, ensuring its own continued existence.
If the strength-in-numbers argument were valid, the board would not only be arguing for retention of its monopoly but for an addition law insisting no current wheat or barley grower should be permitted to switch to other crops, or, for that matter, to quit farming altogether.
When I have made this argument before, I have been told it is preposterous, that the board would never dream of forcing farmers to keep farming crops they don't want to. But how is that any more preposterous than forcing them to sell the crops they have chosen to grow only to the board, or face jail time?
The simple fact is, there is no difference. The coercion is only a matter of degrees.
If the board is still as viable at 75,000 farmers as it was at 120,000
-- and the board insists it is -- than it would be equally viable at 50,000 or 60,000, if those farmers content to take the risk of marketing their own grain were freed to do so.
There is no legitimate argument -- economic or moral -- for permitting the board to retain its absolute control over prairie grain sales.
In his letter to the editor last week about a column I wrote last Monday, CWB chairman Larry Hill said what I had written was full of inaccuracies. I'll concede there was one -- I had missed the appointment by the Conservative government of five pro-free-market directors to the board to replace the Liberals' five pro-monopoly appointees.
I shouldn't have missed it and for that I apologize.
But I reject Mr. Hill's contention that I am a free-speech hypocrite for arguing strenuously for the right to free expression for others, but not the board.
I didn't write the headline that accompanied my piece, "Wheat board should remain silent." I said the wheat board should be made voluntary. That way, whatever money it spent on lobbying for its own existence would come only from those farmer-shareholders who agreed with that goal, rather than also from farmers who wanted out from under the board. What Mr. Hill and other board supporters want is the power for the CWB to be as coercive as government.
lgunter@shaw.ca
30th June, 2008
Editorials
by Lorne Gunter
The CWB's phony numbers game
One statistic concerning the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) has always caused me wry amusement. When I first began covering the country's collectivist grain merchant more than a decade ago, it claimed to represent more than 120,000 farmers on the prairies. Today it boasts just 75,000.
The amusing part is that this decline undermines the board's central argument for its own worth -- namely that there is strength in numbers; all prairie wheat and barley farmers must be lashed to the board's mast together or, as individuals, they would surely sink.
But in just under 15 years, the number of farmers with permit books -- the licenses they need to sell their grain to the government, and only the government -- has fallen by almost half. If there is so much strength in numbers, how come farmers can be permitted to stop growing the grains that the wheat board markets?
Seriously. When I first argued that the board should be voluntary, there were nearly 120,000 farmers pooling their wheat together under the CWB's "single-desk" selling model. I said, even if a quarter of them chose to market outside the board, that would still leave 90,000, more than enough to provide the strength through unity the board argued was essential.
At the time, board supporters and PR types insisted 90,000 wouldn't do the trick. For their system to work, it had to include all 120,000.
Over the intervening years, tens of thousands of farmers have left to grow non-board crops, such as oats, beans, flax and so on. Some have left farming altogether because the board wouldn't free them to sell independently the wheat or barley they grew on their own land, with their own labour, using their own resources. All that's left is 75,000 growers, far fewer than the 90,000 I was told a decade ago was too few to keep the board viable.
Yet, still the board insists there is no room for farmers to sell their wheat except through the CWB.
It's clear, then, the board has no idea what number of farmers is needed to keep it viable, and equally clear the number of farmers shackled to it doesn't matter to the board. What matters -- as it does to all bureaucratic, central-planning agencies -- is control and survival. The board is not interested in maximizing return to farmers as much as it interested in maintaining its iron grip over prairies grain sales and, thereby, ensuring its own continued existence.
If the strength-in-numbers argument were valid, the board would not only be arguing for retention of its monopoly but for an addition law insisting no current wheat or barley grower should be permitted to switch to other crops, or, for that matter, to quit farming altogether.
When I have made this argument before, I have been told it is preposterous, that the board would never dream of forcing farmers to keep farming crops they don't want to. But how is that any more preposterous than forcing them to sell the crops they have chosen to grow only to the board, or face jail time?
The simple fact is, there is no difference. The coercion is only a matter of degrees.
If the board is still as viable at 75,000 farmers as it was at 120,000
-- and the board insists it is -- than it would be equally viable at 50,000 or 60,000, if those farmers content to take the risk of marketing their own grain were freed to do so.
There is no legitimate argument -- economic or moral -- for permitting the board to retain its absolute control over prairie grain sales.
In his letter to the editor last week about a column I wrote last Monday, CWB chairman Larry Hill said what I had written was full of inaccuracies. I'll concede there was one -- I had missed the appointment by the Conservative government of five pro-free-market directors to the board to replace the Liberals' five pro-monopoly appointees.
I shouldn't have missed it and for that I apologize.
But I reject Mr. Hill's contention that I am a free-speech hypocrite for arguing strenuously for the right to free expression for others, but not the board.
I didn't write the headline that accompanied my piece, "Wheat board should remain silent." I said the wheat board should be made voluntary. That way, whatever money it spent on lobbying for its own existence would come only from those farmer-shareholders who agreed with that goal, rather than also from farmers who wanted out from under the board. What Mr. Hill and other board supporters want is the power for the CWB to be as coercive as government.
lgunter@shaw.ca
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