A comment worth pulling to the top of the threads

[bucket]

North farmer

What market in Canada ?

5 guys sitting in Winnipeg having the Friday night beer or Sunday tea?

We are competing against people that are still working for pennies a day....with no where near the technology and with better support.

They are not using equity to stay afloat.

But the young guys can chase the high input high technology farming....they still can't compete over the long haul....

[northfarmer]

North farmer

What market in Canada ?

5 guys sitting in Winnipeg having the Friday night beer or Sunday tea?

We are competing against people that are still working for pennies a day....with no where near the technology and with better support.

They are not using equity to stay afloat.

But the young guys can chase the high input high technology farming....they still can't compete over the long haul....

We lack effective competition in our domestic market. We have a logistics oligopoly (rail) that was for a long time hampered by a state trading agency (cwb) that produced an industry dominated by a few significant players (5 guys in Wpg) lol.

I was a young guy who with leverage and a gamble to scale up when margins were low as way to one day fulfill my dream of farming full time and giving up my career that paid for my bad habit.

My point is I was a young guy who used tech and high input to get me where I am. After 30 years of this my balance sheet affords me a life I am very content with. I have peers in different parts of Canada that have got to the same place.

That being said I will not be complacent. I plan on farming till I can not. I hope there will another generation on our farm. Things could get ugly, commodity cycles can do that.

Complacency and complaining will solve nothing.

[grassfarmer]

............that was for a long time hampered by a state trading agency (cwb) that produced an industry dominated by a few significant players (5 guys in Wpg) lol.

I believe that's false - the grain industry was dominated by the same families before the CWB came into existence that dominate today. Same families that control the US grain sector to a large extent too. Can't blame this one on the CWB.

[farming101]

Strange, not one comment on the fact for decades the grain handling system on the prairies was totally dominated by.......farmer controlled companies and co-ops....

[northfarmer]

I believe that's false - the grain industry was dominated by the same families before the CWB came into existence that dominate today. Same families that control the US grain sector to a large extent too. Can't blame this one on the CWB.

Fair comment. Imo they contributed did not cause. I stand corrected.

[farmaholic]

101.....I think they lost vision of the group of people who created them and they were to serve.

[farming101]

The "they" were farmers, who likely should have never been installed into management. The farmer owners should have hired the best in the business and ran it like a business.

The very same outcome awaits any co-op who tries doing it the same way again.

[farmaholic]

The "they" were farmers, who likely should have never been installed into management. The farmer owners should have hired the best in the business and ran it like a business.

The very same outcome awaits any co-op who tries doing it the same way again.

Well then, was it the diversification and expansion? There were non farmer directors sitting at the board table.

[farming101]

Looking back (20/20 vision) it was probably no one thing and it's not worth blaming any one in particular.

It just wasn't run as a lean mean business.

[Rareearth]

Why doesn't coop look to be the price esters for ag inputs? Grass roots, farmer interests, no its shareholders, and rightly so

Why hasn't federated been aquisitioned by Loblaws, etc?