WTO thoughts

[parsley]

btw, aggie, the hint went right over my head.! You're probably buyer-marketing,are you? Do you have a co-op?

Sorry,I'm not a potential buyer at all. Always interested in some good aParsleyrt, though, (with no smoke on it.)

[Fransisco]

Willagro, you have been talking about the supposed CWB marketing advantage for years now and have yet to provide a single piece of evidence to back up that claim.

Would you care to do so today? Will you ever do so?

[wilagro]

Fransico: Can you show me where turning the marketing over to ADM, Cargill, Louis Drefus. etc. has helped the farmer one lousy bit...when any and all residual profit STAYS with those companies?

[Fransisco]

You mean like how the CWB uses those exact same companies to sell half the wheat and over three quarters of the barley for you every year?

They call them accredited exporters, look it up for yourself here.

http://www.cwb.ca/dom/db/buying/sales_process/accredit.nsf/accexppage2?ReadForm&CategRegion=United%20States


Riddle me this Willagro, how is it that after these company take their profit, and the CWB takes it's, that you believe you still get a better price than dealing with them direct?

[Fransisco]

And in case you missed it in my Wednesday with White posting today here are some prices for you to look at.

In Bottineau North Dakota the closing price for new crop spring wheat today was $7.70 per bu USD

http://bottineaufarmers.com/index.cfm?show=11&mid=6&theLocation=1&cmid=1&layou t=1

The CWB fixed price contract would net me 6.77 per bu CAD in Manitoba for the same wheat.

http://www.cwb.ca/db/contracts/ppo/ppo_prices.nsf/fixed_price/fbpc-wheat-2008-mhrs-20080723.html

If we don't bother to do a currency adjustment(which would just make the board price look worse) that's .93 cents per bushel in favour of the ND farmer.

On a 50 bushel per acre crop that's $46.50 per acre that the Manitoba farmer is losing out on.

Now lets look at winter wheat.

For a bit of a change up today lets look at Berthold ND for their new crop price. It's $7.25 per bushel USD

http://www.bertholdfarmers.com/

CWB fixed price is $5.68 CAD in Manitoba for the same wheat.

So without a currency adjustment that's $1.57 a bushel difference.

On a 70 bushel per acre winter wheat crop that's $110 per acre difference.

Willagro, I have done this for the past three weeks and every time the Board's fixed price has come up short. In fact it has been getting worse.

The CWB subtracts value from my farm.

agstarr jokes about us free market, choice supporters giving away our first born, well the reality is that the CWB has been taking them away from us for generations already.

Now I've shown you mine will you show me yours?

[wilagro]

Fransisco: Haven't played that game since I was five or six years old. If you have a quarrel with the CWB and its pricing...TELL THEM ABOUT IT. I don't make their policies. Their day-to-day pricing is not in my hands. Tke it up with the board of directors...don't you hsve a director for your district? Phone, fax or write him/her and get things straightened out.

[Fransisco]

wilagro I am not the one playing games here, I answered your question and I did it with empirical evidence.

You are the one claiming that we have a "marketing advantage" with the CWB. You are the one who now instead of backing up your statement has decided to hide under the skirts of the Directors instead.

Can you not provide even a single piece of evidence to back up your claim? You, willagro, you, not someone else, you.

"Because the Directors tell me so" is not evidence.

If you can not back up your claim, then you should stop making it.

[Fransisco]

Let me help you out by providing you with a proper counter argument.

willagro, you should be saying something like this, " yes the CWB uses multi nationals like Cargill and ADM from time to time to sell grain on our behalf, but because the CWB has a lock on all of the Western Canadian wheat that gives them clout when dealing with these big grain companies that a lone producer would never have."

[wilagro]

Very good Fransisco...couldn't have said it better myself.

There is power and an advantage in joining together under the umbrella of the CWB in world trade.

I'm glad that you finally see the light <g>.

[Fransisco]

Ahh, so you agree with the counter-argument. I thought you would. But before you start thinking that I've come around to your side willagro there are a couple of problems with this argument.

First off, if you look in the CWB's annual report you will find some pie charts with regards to market share. The total Canadian export market share for Wheat is around 14%, for barley its 9%.

There is no way that any one entity such as the wheat board can have any "clout" with such a small slice of the global market share. It is just not possible.

Secondly, the price comparisons that I showed you above and have shown time after time here on agriville proves that there is no board "clout"

In theory it sounds like there could be, in practice it is quite obvious to me that the board subtracts value from my farm.

So I will ask you a third time to provide some evidence that there is a "marketing advantage" with the CWB.

A theory is not evidence.

And I will ask you a follow up question, you talked about the "power and advantage in joining together under the umbrella of the CWB in world trade". What exactly is stopping you from being able to do so if the board is made voluntary?

[wilagro]

Fransisco: I see nothing wrong with a voluntary CWB providing that if one opts out, then he/she must stay out for at least five to seven years before being able to opt back in...and then with contractual conditions. This would keep the pools from being "used" by speculators jumping in and out. I think that a VOLUNTARY CWB would "force" the CWB to be more accountable to farmers also. I used to rant and rave about the heavy hand that the board used at times that were NOT advantageous to me.

There are some badly needed changes that would "modernize" the CWB. I am not against progress, believe it or not.

[Fransisco]

Personally, I wouldn't have a problem opting out for the five to seven years you talk about, but why couldn't it be a contractual arrangement crop year by crop year based on either tonnage or acres?

You have say X number of tonnes that you commit contractually to the pool for a particular crop year.

I would also say that it shouldn't matter where those tonnes come from the way it does today, if someone is short and they can get it from a neighbor they should be allowed to do so.

What about the possibility of multiple pools throughout the year an A, B, and maybe even a C pool? Or say a penalty for someone who decides they want to get into the pool sometime later in the year?

[wilagro]

Fransisco: Those all sound like good suggestions. If you haven't mentioned them to your local director, this might be a good time to present them.

Quite a hot day today...took the bush-hog and opened up some hay land and dicovered where all the windfalls were. Sure makes the old machine rattle but it is better to find them before the haybine does. That old bush-hog is over twenty years old but still works good. Probably the best equipment purchase I ever made...sure got my moneys worth out of it.

Time for a nap...catch you later.

[charliep]

WTO Negotiations Collapse

Reuters Quote:

"OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's trade minister said he was hopeful that the World Trade Organization could restart talks after they collapsed on Tuesday, but said officials would first need to smooth out some stumbling blocks.
"I am somewhat, perhaps cautiously ... optimistic that the WTO, Mr. Lamy and his organization can kick-start the talks in the not-so-distant future," Michael Fortier told reporters on a conference call from Geneva.
Fortier said WTO chief Pascal Lamy should let officials try to deal with some of the problems that wrecked talks aimed at forging a new global trade deal before summoning ministers to restart negotiations.
"There was progress on a few issues so I think he needs to build that into the (equation) and then -- through the work of senior officials -- take the time to try and come to a resolution on some larger issues, which were clearly big, big red lines, stumbling blocks over the past 10 days," he said.
Meanwhile, Canada hopes to negotiate more bilateral trade deals for its export-dependent sectors, he said.
But Ottawa will continue to stand firm on protecting its supply-managed domestic dairy and poultry sectors, Fortier said, noting Canada wasn't alone in seeking protection for sensitive products.
"No one was there without something in their hip pocket that they were asking for," said Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz.
The WTO talks failed on issues that had nothing to do with Canada's demands, Ritz added."

End Quote