Wheat vs. Coal

[parsley]

Really, Vader? My experience has been that farmers ARE the innovators. They are astute problem solvers. They can fix anything. They grow excellent crops. Innovation for improvement in equipment has often been gleaned at the farm level. They cut back when times are tough. They raise good families. They are good citizens.

Farmers are generally competent and they manage their farms well. Every once in awhile,though, you run across an incompetent one, but they often metamorphose into policy makers in order to survive.

Often,those very policy makers are the ones who have guaranteed that the farm community continues to suffer with wheat that is marketed under the cost of production.

The proof is in the pudding when one looks at the returns of Board grains over a sixty year period at the farmgate , and compares them to the returns of non Board grains at the farmgate over the same period.

Only then, can one can understand why the farm community groans in unison when a farmer-turned-policy-maker is a wannabe thinker propped up by a velvet government chair.

Parsley

[ianben]

Pasted this thread again as I think it is relevent here on the sustainability issues

Simply explained, biomass is vegetation -- for example, trees, grasses, plant
parts such as leaves, agricultural waste products, and ocean plants. Being
extremely efficient solarcollection systems, plants will produce and store
energy in the form of carbon as they grow.

During photosynthesis, plants combine carbon dioxide from the air and water
from the ground to form carbohydrates, which form the building blocks of
biomass. The solar energy that drives photosynthesis is stored in the
chemical bonds of the structural components of biomass. If we burn
biomass efficiently (which extracts the energy stored in the chemical bonds),
then oxygen from the atmosphere combines with the carbon in plants to
produce carbon dioxide and water.

Biomass is one of the oldest fuels known to man. Although basic, the
primitive campfire illustrates the nature of using biomass for power.
When biomass is burned, it produces heat. In a power plant, this heat
is used to turn water into steam. The steam is then used to turn turbines,
which are connected to electric generators.

Prior to 1875; the United States primary energy supply was from biomass.
And back then, an acre of native grass provided the energy to fuel a
horse -- then the country's only means of transportation! (That's roughly
what it took to pasture one.) Today, using that same quantity of native
grass as a biomass resource, enough fuel can be created to drive a
car 10,000 miles!

There is actually and abundance of biomass in virtually every part of
the world that can be tapped to create power. If we used all the biomass
potentially available today, the energy content in that fuel would produce
an estimated 2,750 Quads. (1 Quad is equal to 1,000,000,000,000,000
BTUs) At present, the world population uses only about 7% of the
available annual production of biomass.

Biomass is probably the most underutilized renewable resource in the
U.S. today. How much of this alternative energy material is available
for use in this country right now? Here is an example. Space heating
accounts for approximately 50% of our total annual energy budget and
is also responsible for more than 25% of our total Green House Gas
emissions. Approximately six quadrillion BTU's of energy were consumed
for space heating in the United States, representing about $45 billion in
expenditures. According to the 1997 census there are 101 million homes
in the US. The current available biomass resources could potentially heat
the equivalent of 260 million homes!

By displacing more polluting forms of energy generation, biomass resources
for energy will also assist America in reducing its dependence on Persian
Gulf oil and cut emisions of those harmful greenhouse gases. Using
Biomass for energy technologies will also create jobs and fuel economic
growth across America.

Using biomass to create energy showcases many unique qualities that
can provide a plethora of environmental benefits as well. It can help
mitigate climate change, reduce acid rain, soil erosion, water pollution
and pressure on landfills, provide wildlife habitat, and help maintain
forest health through better management.

More than any other resource, biomass is capable of simutaneously
addressing the nations' energy, environmental, and economic needs.
Biomass is the logical alternative fuel of the future.


I would just like to draw your attention to the last paragragh.

Can it be a win win win solution?

If you go right back to the begining of this thread sustainability was my greivance.

Why are we selling feed wheat a a price we cannot replace it for?

Why are we selling wheat for less than its energy value?

[parsley]

Ianben;

We would not be selling wheat for less than cost of production if we can eliminate:

1.Exhorbitant administration costs. The CWB employees are VERY VERY well paid. More $ in farmer pockets

2. National Licensing costs should be paid for by the Federal Governmant as the law requires. More $ in farmer pockets.

3. Demmurage costs should be unheard of for farmers. More $ in farmer pockets.


4. Eliminate Board marketing and have Marketing by farmers who want to market their own grain. Nobody is more interested in my bottom line than I am. More $ in farmer pockets.

5. No more cash going towards the Liberal fundraisers. More $ in farmer pockets.
6. No more sending cars filled with the wrong grain at the wrong time all over the country like the CWB does. More $ in farmer pockets.
7. No more paying for 25 or 30 per diem-CWB staff attending a meeting with 20 farmers at the meeting. More $ in farmer pockets.
8. No more paying $10Million annually for International Trade wars that the Federal Government is legislatively supposed to be paying. More $ in farmer pockets.

9. No more paying for overcleaning at the ports. More $ in farmer pockets.

10.No more paying for ridiculous, embarassing CWB advertising that does not add one cent to the value of the grain for farmers.More $ in farmer pockets.

Burn our wheat? Let's just eliminate some of these bleeding costs. They really do add up.

Parsley

[Vader]

Parsley,

you post the long huge litany of exhorbitant CWB costs and say just get rid of the CWB and everything will be just fine.

Total CWB costs are $3.50 per tonne this year or 10 cents per bushel. The CWB earns roughly this amount back on the careful management of credit receivables so the net cost to the producer is actually zero.

But even forgetting about the interest earnings do you really think that adding 10 cents per bushel of wheat is going to solve the problem of a world awash in grain.

The world produced a record crop of corn this past year exceeding the previous record by 40 million tonnes. Canada's total production of the six major grains is 50 million tonnes.

Parsley, only in your tiny little simplistic world will eliminating the CWB solve the income crisis in agriculture.

Corporate consolidation around the world continues. Rumors abound with which grain company will be next to merge or acquire the other guy. Five grain companies today control 80 percent of grain handling in the world.

Farmers are driven to produce more and more grain as margins decline and the market power is driven into the hands of the multinationals as producers are forced through the bottleneck of the multinational processors and grain handlers. Yes a few small organic growers can bypass some of these barriers and get a premium by dealing directly with the customer. What would that be? 250,000 tonnes per year? One million? Worldwide? A drop in the bucket. The world produced 622 million tonnes of spring wheat alone.

What chance of achieving even miniscule amounts of market power does the average farmer have if they listen to you and throw away the CWB? No, the answer is to completely delink the CWB from government and continue on the road to accountability, flexibility and innovation that the elected governance structure of the CWB has begun. As long as the multinationals do not own all of the flour mills in Japan, China, and North Africa there is an opportunity for Western Canadian Farmers to bypass these multinationals and do business directly with the end users through the CWB.

Parsley, in your world a few small niche market producers will perhaps find success while the vast majority are squeezed through the cattle chutes and stripped of all their profits by the multinational grain handlers and processors. Don't call me a fear monger. Just look at reality. Who is over in the Ukraine taking wheat from the Ukrainian farmer at $50.00 per tonne and putting it on the world market at $100.00. It is those guys who control 80% of the grain trade. Look at any corporation. Do they have any concience if it has not be shoved down their throats by legislation. They bow down to the almighty shareholder. Profit is everything. For a food processor that means lowering their acquisition costs.

ADM posted record profits at Christmas time when the abundant harvest came in and drove down commodity prices. ADM is investing in oilseed crushing in China. Right now no one player has more than one percent of the flour milling in China. That could change and it will if ADM and Cargill have their way. You see they control the grain handling industry but they make their money on processing. Could it be any plainer?

Farmers in the US are struggling even with 25 Billion dollars per year in subsidies. They don't have a big bad CWB. The do pay way more in freight than we do. Their elevators comingle the good with the bad and cannot deliver a consistent quality product to their customers. They envy our reputation for quality. The US keeps trying to pull us down to their level. They attack our variety registration system. They call our government owned hopper cars a subsidy. They want to destroy the CWB. Why don't they try to bring their system up to the same standards as our system. They say they have breeding programs delivering wheat varieties that are the best in the world, but they can't deliver that quality to the customer. It is much easier to tear down what we have instead. They are a bunch of bullies.

We can fight. I am not sure we can win. We have already lost a generation of farmers. The next generation of farmers could well be employees of the multinationals and the family farm could be extinct. I don't know. What I do know is that we stand a better chance if we play the game smart. We have to play together. We have to quit arguing.

As the era of the Saskatchwan Wheat Pool comes to an end and another multinational plucks them out of the game I see the CWB rises to take their place. We can learn from history and do it better or we can keep making the same mistakes over and over. The game is getting more complicated. There are a lot of new rules and new tools. If we join the game without a game plan, and that is what I suggest that you are promoting, we will lose. The CWB is capable of developing and carrying out a plan. It can be any plan. It doesn't have to be the plan you see today. It is up to us to decide how to use this tool. The worst possible decision would be to simply throw it away.

[TOM4CWB]

Vader,

A really simple solution.

When I need the CWB... and offer grain to the CWB... because it earns my business... great.

But the CWB does not have the right to steal grain not offered to it in the first place.

Respect, creativity, trust, integrity, value... these are all attributes a monopoly does not need to take my grain from me at discount prices.

Unless the CWB takes a drastic step to resolve these issues... it will be dismantled... by some force greater than designated area farmers themselves.

We must create a system that works in harmony... creates intrinsic value that can be measured.

Millers want and need screenings... that is why we add them back after cleaning out dockage to the maximum tolerance. The grain must be recleaned to go through the mill in any event before it can be processed in modern mills.

One simple command VADER... "thou shalt not steal".

[parsley]

Vader,

The CWB has been the ONLY player in wheat in Canada since 1947. Every mill, every elevator, every grain licensed facility was declared "a works for the general advantage of Canada" at that time.

You may want to blame the multinationals and the corporations for all the ills farmers now suffer from wheat trades, but they are about as responsible for the state of the wheat trade in Canada as country western singers and mallard ducks are.

The ONLY maestro of the wheat trade in Canada has been the CWB. The CWB, and only the CWB, has conducted the wheat trade and we are enjoying the results.

No processing industry, no value-added and no investment in wheat by anyone with common sense.

The CWB owns this mess and you want more of the same.

Just as the organic farmer established an organic industry parallel to the conventional one, (and it actually does put some cash in farmers' pockets, and it is actually is thriving), the wheat growers in this country can set aside the CWB and thrive. Thrive. Thrive.

The only difference between you and I Vader, as farmers, is that I believe in my fellow farmers. I believe in his judgement and his work ethic and his ability to do a top rate job of doing what he knows best...growing and selling the best crops in the world.

You don't trust him to know his business. You don't trust his marketing acumen. You don't trust his ability to liase with other industries.

You don't trust.

The Canadian Wheat Board has failed miserably because they do not trust the farmers they are legislated to license. They do not trust the farmer who offers the grain to the CWB.

They show disrespect and comtempt towards the very folks who pay their bills.

And it has to stop. And it will.

Parsley

[Vader]

Tom, you have a strange definition of stealing. You know that the CWB returns 100% of sales revenues to farmers. The CWB simply reflects the best price it can obtain in the market and sell that amount of wheat which is offered by farmers given those market signals.

[Vader]

Parsley,

It is not a matter of trust. Look at the reality of agriculture around the world. Farmers are suffering world wide CWB or no CWB. How can you blame the problems of agriculture around the world on the CWB?

The Ukranian farmer has no Ukranian wheat board. He gets 50.00 per tonne for his wheat. $1.36 per bushel. Do you trust him to continue farming that way and earning a living. I don't think that trust has anything to do with it.

You throw out Trust as if this is some sort of religous debate. Perhaps fighting the CWB is a religion to you. I take this as a serious business. I deal in facts not beliefs. You should do the same.

[TOM4CWB]

Vader;

The CWB has a strange way of operating... when it puts pools ahead of farmers right to choose a fair cash price... it puts farmers in jail for giving a sack of wheat to a 4-H club in Montana... and does every possible thing to prevent transparent marketing signals from getting back to "designated area" wheat producers.

Like selling 1CWRS 13.5 wheat for $240-250/t while offering a CWB cash price for the same grain of $180/t.

And like we are supposed to believe you are doing this to maximise our returns?

How stupid do you think we are Vader?

[parsley]

Neither the CWB nor you, Vader, believe farmers have the ability to market their own grain. The big bad wolves out there will get us. You feel we need to be shielded, protected, because we do not have the ability to fend for ourselves, or to form liaisons with other groups we want to do business with. Or to make good decisions. You have a patriarchal attitude. You think you know best, and you want the use of force, the state, or jail to back up your “right” decision because I am “wrong”. That is what you are.

On the other hand I trust the farmer, whether Ukranian, Ethiopian, Norwegian or Arabic, to make decisions that are right for him. If he wants to form a Wheat Association, he will do so. If he wants a voluntary Wheat Marketing Board, he will form it. Working together, it’s called. Working together because you want to, and because you trust in the other partners you have. Liking them. Respecting them. Rather like a marriage of work. These concepts are foreign to the Canadian Wheat Board. It is a government agency, with the force of the state behind it. An arranged marriage and a big stick. They do not believe in farmers, nor respect them, nor have any intention to begin to.

“My way”, through force or jail is a commitment to an approach to life that can never move forward. It can never bloom or flourish. You cannot get respect if you won’t give respect. Serious businessmen understand that the way they do business will affect every transaction. How they look at the customers they serve is important. How they look upon their fellow partners is tantamount to succeeding. Many large multinationals actually are teaching philosophy and business ethics because as you say, they take this business serious. In that context, how can the CWB possibly survive?

I hope I never think like you do Vader.

[Everest]

Parsley, what if you or I got elected to the CWB Board of Directors? How would we think then? (I don't know about you, but I am NOT a CWB director or employee!) I've noticed that in a few cases at least, folks that have been appointed or elected to the CWB thinking one way, end up thinking another way after they are there for a while. I wonder what happens?

[cropduster]

Everest,I`ve come to think it`s because they are basically shallow people.If you look at the personal background of the chairman for example there is a trail of broken marriages,career changes as a result of personal allegations etc.They are adults who simply have no fixed standards.That`s why it`s so easy for them to take any stand that suits the moment.They truly have no vision for the future only the moment.History will show how SHALLOW they really are.

[parsley]

Everest,

Take a look at the "elite" and educated in our society.

Chartered Accountants, for example, have a serious problem as they "look the other way" or devise creative accounting instead of saying, "No, that's wrong", and "that cannot be done" in case they lose a customer.

Ethics is a very serious problem in our society. The law societies are filled with complaints about the greedy little lawyer who took off with Grandma's investments. Doctors push drugs to get free trips.

Everyone points to the multinationals and we can all cite Enron and so on, but the bottom line is that accountants are regulated and can be sued, and so corporations can be sued for mismanagement and so on.

Incidentally, Corps today are very interested in hiring on moral credentials as well as educational ones. A lot of "educates" that cannot make it in the real world end up in Government. In the old days, charliep, being employed by the government was a badge of honor, and the old boys from the old school are still treated with respect, and often it is well deserved respect, so don't get sensitive on me here.


What is particularly egregious, is when the ruling elite are not only the players, but the regulators.

The Canadian Wheat Board tries to pitch that they are a modern corporation, when in fact they are the mouth of Government. And worse, the Regulatory side of the Board regulates their very selves...the marketing side.

That spells trouble in our society, where the Federal Government has become a greedy devious player who regulates itself . It is is bound to result in conflict of interests. Especially with all those political appointees that can't get through the Corporate world's front door.

Everest, the folks who "turn sides" when they hit the Board table never really knew what or who they were themselves, to begin with. The kind of folks you never want to do business with have "I'm Taking Offers" signs written on their foreheads.

When you get to be my age you can smell the ink.

I do not and simply would not work at the CWB.

Parsley

[Vader]

Parsley, I admire your honesty in stating that you would not work at the CWB. It would obviously be a conflict of interest.

Anyone who works toward the end of the CWB should declare this conflict of interest and should not be allowed to run for election as a CWB director.

[parsley]

Vader,

Rod Flaman worked towards the end of the CWB. Are you saying he should have declared this conflict of interest and should not have been allowed to run for election as a CWB director?

Parsley