Monday downer...

[jazz]

So is there no truth to his claims that foreign buyers are disappointed with the lower quality of product they are receiving from Canada? Do you know if the standard of product the international customer is receiving has slipped? Do you care about that?

Actually it is the opposite of that. There are countries that want lower grade product. They don't feed rich people so they have learned to use lower grades, blend whatever. The CWB was totally oblivious to that market and sold a bunch of wheat as feed, or blended lower stuff up and tried to pass it off while there was a clear separate market for it.

Now we are seeing the neglect of the market come home to roost. We are still being told to grow the most high quality we can and take feed prices for it, make the diff up on volume when clearly that is not what the world wants or needs. Now the price differentials are destroyed along with the protein differentials. Durum is the same price as feed. The CWB was the precursor to this and we still didn't pivot our approach after they were gone.

We need to be realistic about where our production is going. Canola was feeding pigs. Durum is feeding livestock and pulses are feeding poor people in India. Do you know what people in India substitute lentils for when the prices get too high? Mud, that's right. Those people will eat mud because they cant pay for the product. Don't need a lot of high quality for that market.

[LEP]

Grassy, you and Ken obviously know nothing about the grain trade.

Every grain contract has very specific specs which need to be met. It clearly states tolerances for foreign material and if it doesn't meet that spec it can be rejected.

India did not stop buying lentils because they were too dirty. Each shipment had a grade certification given to it and if doesn't meet spec there are clear rules on how to deal with it.

[sumdumguy]

We are going to have to open our eyes to the fact that we have thrown the baby out with the bath water and we should keep an open mind to ways to examine the consequences of the disintegration. I did not value the CWB but I did value all the other government programs that backed us up in all our exporting. Harper did us wrong not standing up and retaining our strength by dismantling everything. Sorry guys, I can see a dangerous trend has left the industry in disarray and the damage is filtering down and kicking us in the butt. Unless a new government is forced to replace the supports, we are going to continue the spiral downward.

[bucket]

Scheer has been pretty quiet on the 9 dollar bushel drop in red lentil prices....

Don't see others taking a pay cut like farmers are expected to...

My 2019 agristability fee is paid....My 2017 hasn't been finished yet ....2018 ...I need to finish my forms yet....

I am well looked after by the programs the Conservatives like Scheer gutted...

The canola in question is the graincos grain....its nice to see how quick they stood up and took notice when Richardson made the call......

[rumrocks]

The so called contamination, dockage, foreign material problem could be very easily eliminated by having a few country of destination inspectors inspect and grade, then reject or accept before and during loading of the ship.
That would remove the contamination leverage out of the bartering equation.

[jazz]

The CWB should have become our marketing arm. Taking up the mantle of these farm groups and govt and opening doors to trade constantly. They had contacts and other resources and that should have been strengthened and with a private influence could have really created some value. An entity like that right now would be very useful in our current trade disputes. I never expected a dual market or to be thrown to the wolves either. When the CWB got folded up and sold for pennies was a sad day.

[macdon02]

i still say that every govt in the world is tits up and rather then cause a huge commotion stating so, they are coming up with other reasons to not buy. Use up the stocks they claim they have that are cheaper, and likely dropping out of condition, then buying foreign.

[SASKFARMER]

Honest to god why I read anything grass posts it’s total bullshit.

We have a superior product compared to other places in the world and we actually have grain traces right back to the farm.

Other places yea right.

It’s stupid and when producers can’t figure it out really sad.

[sumdumguy]

When we had a government cert, it was pretty hard for the buyers to reject on quality claims. Especially official certs which meant the load was probed and graded for export. These guarantees made shipping for export more secure. These certs did not come cheap but they were supportive. Even our Grain Commissioners (we had one right in Regina and several in other larger centres) would advocate on our behalf. Now hen large companies are exporting, I can’t say whether that process is there to back them up - and the fall-out lands on the producer. I country that values major exports would reimplement. That’s my humble opinion. SDG

[blackpowder]

You either want full govt control ie COFCO, or you don't. Anything in between is just ****ery. Communism always has it's **** in the ass of Socialism.
Buyers needs and weather will never change.

[jimmy]

Well here's where one farm group (that doesn't take millions) is - although no doubt many of you won't like it. Worth thinking about though as I think there will be some truth to it.


"Canada has lost credibility and grain customer trust thanks to deregulation

by Ken Larsen

Prairie farmers have seldom faced such a barrage of bad news. The three giant agro-chemical-seed companies are campaigning to take control of all seed genetics away from farmers and charge more for the pedigreed seed that is the foundation of Canada’s quality assurance system. At the same time, our major customers for grains, oil seeds, and pulses are turning their backs on our products. In spite of what some in the private trade loudly proclaim about recent events, running through all these issues is the common thread of credibility and trust.

Without the Canadian Wheat Board, the marketing for prairie grain has defaulted to the three or four giant grain companies dominating the world market. The two Canadian-based companies, Parrish and Heimbecker and J. I. Richardson International, have tried to fill the marketing gap left by the CWB, but on the world stage they are, to put it kindly, only mom-and-pop operations. They have little influence on either domestic policy or international events, as the recent problems with the Chinese canola market demonstrate.

The goal of the prairie grain export system, whether it was Board grains or non-board grains, was to have potential customer tenders specify “source: Canadian.” Most of the time this was achieved by using the Canadian Wheat Board and three interlocked government agencies – Agriculture Canada, the Canadian Grain Commission, and the Canadian International Grains Institute.

First is Agriculture Canada plant breeding and research stations across Canada. They provide impartial seed breeding done in the interests of farmers and our international customers.

Second and most important is the Canadian Grain Commission. It provided an independent and impartial third-party verification of the quality of grain loaded into export ships. The CGC’s “Certificate Final” carried the prestige and authority of the Government of Canada and was respected around the world. Customers could rely on the fact that a Canadian grain shipment contained exactly what the CGC’s inspectors specified and nothing else. The Certificate Final made buyers trust the quality of Canadian grain.

Third is the Canadian International Grains Institute. Each fall CIGI gathered representative samples of the principle grains grown on the prairie to provide information to potential customers. If a noodle maker in Asia was interested in wheat, the CWB would often fly them to the prairies to meet some farmers who had grown the grain they were interested in purchasing. Then at the CIGI offices in Winnipeg this potential buyer would see a sample of the grain milled and processed in the demonstration-scale flour mills, pasta machines, or, in the case of malt barley, a brewery. So our customer left Canada with the specifications for how to set their factory to obtain the best quality product using the specific Canadian grain they purchased and with the confidence it would be delivered as promised.

For Board grains the Canadian Wheat Board provided marketing, financing, and customer follow up. Prairie farmers grained all the advantages of having the beneficial ownership of their grain from farm gate to the customer’s terminal. Offices in Japan, China, and Europe allowed the CWB to have on-site staff familiar with customers and their cultures. It should be remembered that CWB staff often assisted other Canadian grain exporters in navigating the labyrinth of the international grain trade.

If something went amiss in that long chain, CWB staff were nearby to the destination and had the authority and ability to rectify any short comings. This interconnected efficient system gave Canada the credibility to boast our farmers were “feeding the world” and gave international customers the incentive to specify “source: Canadian” for grain purchases.

One of the policy achievements of the Harper Government was putting in motion the privatization of Canada’s agricultural export system - a process the Ottawa Liberals have been continuing. Now the consequences of that privatization policy are coming home to prairie farmers as crashing prices for canola, pulses, and durum wheat. If present trends continue, can hard red spring wheat be far behind?

It is so bad on the prairies even the urban media notices China no longer wants to buy prairie canola. Sadly, the media cannot remember three years ago the Chinese complained about too much dockage (stems, chaff and other foreign material) in canola shipments. A customer wanting a cleaner product is apparently not sexy enough for some of the media. Instead, they opted for a narrative based on a byzantine spy thriller involving the arrest of a Chinese executive years after the dirty canola issue was raised.

Two years ago, India stopped buying Canadian lentils and other pulses for much the same reason (not clean enough). Between India and China, the problem of too much dockage has effectively crippled almost all those prairie exports. The 80% world market share Canada often enjoyed for its high-quality durum (pasta) wheat is also effectively lost for much the same reasons.

The disastrous loss of these markets boils down to the fact Canada has lost its credibility in the international grain market. Canada is no longer seen as a trusted supplier of high-quality grains. The reason for this is very simple: aside from a couple of mom-and-pop operations, Canada doesn’t market its own grain anymore. That has been out-sourced to the giant multinational grain companies.

Why would these giants not want to keep the Canadian quality assurance system? After succeeding in killing the CWB, why are their friends and representatives pushing to merge CIGI with the private trade dominated Cereals Canada, and why are they working to undermine the Canadian Grain Commission?

The answer is clear. They have no desire to service any customer tenders that specify “source: Canadian.” It enhances their profits to have all tenders specify “source: optional.” This is because it allows them to fill tenders based on where in the world’s grain growing areas they can purchase grain from farmers at the cheapest price and then flip it to the customer for the biggest corporate profit. This is their business model and for the past 120 years it has been very successful for their owners and shareholders. With the end of the Canadian Wheat Board, grain companies are now in a position to take huge profits out of the Canadian prairies. Both the Harper and Trudeau administrations have played right into their hands by destroying Canada’s international credibility that made customers specify “source: Canadian.”

For prairie farmers this means a lot less income and being forced to realize, as canola producers are learning, that there are many sources of oil seeds and other grains around the world. Without a trusted quality assurance system, Canada cannot bully or humiliate potential customers into specifying “source: Canadian.”

-30-

Ken Larsen is an Alberta grain and forage producer and a member of the Canadian Wheat Board Alliance and the National Farmers Union."

CWB lol lol you got to be kidding. If we still had the CWB we would still have half of last years grain sitting in the bin depreciating. That was the most useless organization around run by useless people that couldn’t give a **** about the producer.

[Hamloc]

Grassfarmer if the CWB existed could they get the detained Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou shipped back to China? Could the CWB have prevented the 10's of million of pig deaths in China due to African swine fever? Even though there should be a large increase in pork demand in China they are holding up shipments of Canadian pork. Protectionist sentiment coming from governments not corporations are doing the greatest damage to Canada's ability to export their commodities. Just for the record I still do not miss the CWB!! Enjoy your day.