selling verses collecting

[wmoebis]

I sold feed grain to a hog barn this year, they operate 16 barns. Since I delivered the company has entered into a forebearance agreement with secured creditors. Thus we(unsecured creditors) can't be paid. According to their legal web site there is up to 1000 of us to this 1 company alone. I was wondering how big of a problem this is with other buyers/sellers. With the troubles in all livestock industry do others have a lot of outstanding production they are having trouble collecting on.

[WRAPper]

I had a talk with one of the good people from the CGC at the Wild Rose Annual meeting. I think it's about time that farmers start writing letters to the cgc to get after them to develop either a form of self insurance or to develop a bonding system for grains sold to non-traditional large volume users when you take time to look at some of these "larger" domestic users and the value and volume of grain that is purcahsed by them there are huge dollars there. As well as getting more serious about enforcing bonding regs that are already in place. Is this something for Wild Rose to persue on behalf of Alberta farmers or is it best left as a traditional "handshake" agrreement? And or is it a place for the Alberta grain commission. I'd like to hear some thoughts on that as well.

[melvill]

wmoebis, one thing I'd be interested in is this: do you have any notion how far behind this company is in paying feedgrain producers for grain. In other words, did feedgrain producers deliver five or six loads before payment wasn't made of did they deliver one or two loads and notice that payment wasn't coming.

This issue is becoming more important as time passes. I regularly hear of barley growers not being paid for grain. Usually growers are requesting payment immediately so that if that doesn't happen individuals, at least, have a warning that something is wrong before many loads are delivered.

[melvill]

I reread my last post. "Regularly" doesn't mean often. It means regularly once or twice times a year, not once a month or more. In terms of the total amount of feed deliveries, it's not usually big volumes but it certainly hurts the individual producers.

Does anyone know anything about an Ontario kind of 'self-insurance' program to help out with this sort of thing?

[wmoebis]

Most guys I have heard of make a deal for a bin full or so at a time. They want to empty a whole bin. The company runs each barn on it's own so it would depend on the barn how fast payment was coming. Usualy you phoned ahead and they told you aprox. how long it would take. Then you made up your mind whether you wanted to deliver. These barns are in small communities where they may be one of the only close markets for feed grain.
The problem is if the local producers miss out or don't accept their terms they just go to brokers out of the area and get grain from them who in turn get it from you. We get less from the broker than directly from the barn and then take the risk of the barn and /or the broker going broke.
Since this has come to light I have heard of guys that are owed for feed since a year ago OCT. (15 months)

[cropduster]

Lee,and others,the Western Barley Growers are working at formulating a type of `clearing house` for all ag commodities for these type of situations.It is still in infancy stage but is moving forward.(At the risk of sounding like TOM4CWB)It hopefully will be in place to offset the removal of our Canadian STE.!

[melvill]

Okay, I'll bite. What's "Canadian STE"?

[wmoebis]

I don't think it is so much of a clearing house we need as a revamp of The Canadian Grain Act to include licensing and bonding of all buyers not just dealers and elevators.
But what is more we need CGC that will monator and inforce it's own mandatory policies. Something with real power.
Glad to see someone else has been after the CGC to do something.

[cropduster]

LEE,Canada`s State trading agency??????(Hint:it starts with a C ).Wmoebis,you sound like such a GOOD Canadian,"Let`s just legislate those suckers into doing things right!!"A clearing house(my idea of it) would have both sides putting up some sort of non-performance bond to generate trust in the other party to complete the deal correctly.NO contract can work unless there is trust!

[Incognito]

state trading enterprise