CWB

[parsley]

I confess.

In 1998 the CWB ACT took Creston-Wyndell right out of the DA. Chop chop.

And that is the truth.

The point is this, it doesn't matter if you are in the DA or out of the DA, the CWB can issue you a permit to bypass them completely to give marketing choice.

Parsley

[parsley]

And so,incognito, the CWB issued no-buyback export permits for many years, while Creston Wyndell was part of the DA, and the CWB provided them with marketing choice.

And when the Act was opened up by Goodale in 1998, Creston Wyndell was permanently removed from the Designated Area.

Most farmers weren't even aware that a dual marketing system was in place and running, right within the Designated Area, wmoebis. Were you?

And the sky did not fall.

Parsley

[sawfly]

chaffmiester
yes the board does not have a monoply,
they do have the ability to differentually price.
when the usa was trying to prove dumping by the board a few years ago in durham. the trade panel found 13 out of 14 sales were above the local price. So how does that happen with unlimited supplies sitting just north of the border.
it happened because the cwb controled the supply of cdn durham. the usa had shorted themselves in durham created the best price in the world.
in the open market a flood of cdn durham would have dropped the local price to world price. or the us would have slammed the border shut.
japan regularly pays 15 to 20$ a tonne preiums to get top grade cdn. wheat. in the open market the buyer dictates the premium . not the seller . with lots of sellers fighting for the few prime markets preiums dissapear.

as for my comparision to monsanto and glyphosate prices. the patents have nothing to do with it. the patents had expired 15 years ago.
there were many brands of glyphosate produced, by priceing in unision, and differentully (as they sold the same product in different parts of the world at varoius prices) depending on competition and uses.
extracting the most from every market.

these probably are not large benifits 10-50 cents a bushell maybe? if their lost it just means the gov. of the is gonna have to cough up that much more farm support if the industry is to exist.

by the same logic whatever (supposed ) benifits the open market provides is not going to improve things enough to make a differance anyway.

So do what you will, its not gonna matter.
the usa and the eec set the rules for the game. and a free open market does not exist, so why chase it.nobody else does.

farm chem/seed companys enjoy a subsidy of at least 100% simply by regulations keeping out competition out after patents have expired.
How about a little free market there.(youd think big co.s would favor free enterprise) and save the cdn taxpayer about 10$/acre in farm supports or should i say chem co. supports.

Sadly it makes most of us cdn. farmers feel like crap to get survival money from the govt. and not from the market.To watch our equity turn into debt. theres getting to be so few of us left we couldnt even muster a good rebelion. Elimination of the middle class farmer is the order of the day.
and tinkering with the wheatboard isnt gonna stop it.

[rodb]

It seems that some people will believe anything if it is printed in a column in the newspaper.

As it was mentioned in above threads that someone must have written or supplied her with the info.

If we don't have the monoply of the CWB the sky will collapse, the sun won't come up in the morning and half of Saskatchewan will be for sale with no buyers. Wait a minute half of
Saskatchewan is for sale. It was interesting that Furtan is saying that most land in the Designated area is undervalued(except for hiway 2 corridor)and has no real potential for increase in value. This despite the monoply of the CWB.

The problem is not the CWB monoply or the lack of a dual market but the fact that other countries place more value on the people who work and protect the environment (Farmers). We can not compete against the US treasury or the CAP of the EU.

Yes the CWB needs to change and serve the people that they have economic control over and not worry about the few jobs that they create in Winnipeg and other offices in Canada and around the world. We need more directors elected that will stand up for what is right and not prostitute themselves for the status quo and the paycheck that goes along with it.

Well with that rant, this thread should be done

[chaffmeister]

Sorry rodb - I'm not quite done....

Sawfly:

On durum into the US:
Perhaps you know more about the durum case than I do. I’ve always been left wondering if we aren’t comparing apples to oranges – I know from ersoanl experience that it’s easy to miss something subtle but important.
So investigators found that 14 out of 15 prices were higher.
- Was there a quality difference – even a subtle difference not necessarily picked up by grades? (Canadian durum tends to be better than US.) If so, was it the CWB that “manufactured” that quality? What role does the CWB play regarding quality?
- Was there a volume difference in the sales? (Mills can buy larger volumes of durum of consistent quality from Canada in one shot – one of the things they like about dealing with the CWB.) Could the Western Canadian system provide consistent quality in large amounts without the CWB? Or is it the CWB’s doings that pulls these quality trains together (and not the likes of Weyburn Inland Terminal)?
- If you were a US durum miller and were looking at the prospects of losing access to the best durum around because the ITC was investigating, what would your position be? What would you be telling anyone who’d listen?
- What do you think makes durum different than spring wheat? Why do you think durum prices were higher (and therefore not an injury to US farmers) but spring wheat prices weren’t?

Don’t you just wonder? What makes durum different? Aren’t you left with a lot of questions? I know I am.


On Japan and premiums:
If Japan is paying premiums it’s paying premiums for Canadian quality – not CWB quality. No economic analysis that I’ve seen has ever proven that without the CWB, Japan would stop paying a premium price for a premium product from Canada.
And if we went to the dreaded open market, competition between exporters for farmers’ grain would keep them from pissing the premiums away.

On Monsanto and “the patents had nothing to do with it”:
I think Monsanto would disagree. I won’t belabour the point but their 2000 Annual Report goes into a lot of detail about how losing the patent on glyphosate in the US that year was expected to drive down prices as generic versions are sold. As Monsanto put it “this generally has been our experience in world areas outside of the United States where the glyphosate patents have expired.”

The New York Times put it quite well (Aug 2001): “Monsanto has maintained and even souped up Roundup's status by forging what analysts say was a brilliant strategy of dropping its price years ahead of patent expiration and tying its use to the early growth of genetically modified crops -- crops made to work in tandem with the herbicide. “It was a classic pricing strategy," said Leslie Ravitz, an analyst at Morgan Stanley. "It was a textbook case. Every 1 percent price drop led to a 2.5 or 3 percent increase in volume."

Interesting. Sell more, even at a slightly lower price – and make more money. Perhaps the CWB could use some advice from Monsanto on marketing.


On “10-50 cents a bushel benefits” and “by the same logic whatever (supposed ) benifits the open market provides is not going to improve things enough to make a differance anyway.”:
Assuming you’re right about CWB premiums, to do a proper, rigorous analysis, you also need to assess and measure the CWB costs (hidden and otherwise) that would also disappear if the CWB was optional, and the reduction in handling costs (see Incognito’s posting above), and the reduction in price impacts on other crops, and so on.

Why is it that CWB-huggers don’t want to look at the whole picture?


You wanna know something – I’m not here waving the free open market flag as some sort of panacea – although it is one system that I have confidence in. I’ve said it before – there may be a role for the CWB, but the evidence as I see it is to the contrary and the CWB has never really proven itself.

More than anything I’m concerned that the resistance to change at and around the CWB is not based on rational thought and certainly not based on all the facts. You can’t manage what you don’t measure and no one has really properly measured the CWB yet. No one.

I suggest that if you are going to fight for the CWB, at least get all the facts. Who knows – if the right information came out showing the CWB adds dollars to your bottom line, I’d be there to support it.

[rodb]

No problem chaffmeister

Usually when I go on one of my rants everyone runs away to avoid arguing with some who is only playing with half a deck.

I agree that all the facts should be on the table and let the chips fall where they may.

My biggest problem with the CWB is lack of true market signals. The CWB has to low ball a certain amount of CWRS as we produce too much on most normal years. Yes we do get a premium for a certain tonnage but not all that we produce. If they didn't have to be fair and equitable to everyone by pooling it would be possible to grow all the high protein 1 CWRS in southern Alberta and maybe a corner of Saskatchewan. This would provide even a higher return as the freight costs would be less. We need them to do more contracts like the Warburton one. IP's will soon be the way to get a premium as the customer will not want a blended bulk commodity and that will be too much work for the CWB to handle as it is presently structured.

[Incognito]

Quote:
In contrast, a study financed by the provincial government of Alberta
concludes that the CWB lacks market power and finds that the Canadian
grain system is more costly than the comparable U.S. system. The study
concluded that Japan is the only market where a single-desk premium may
exist, and that, based on Japan’s share of CWB sales ( not from the study -CWB share of wheat exports is 24% versus United States share of 57%), the single-desk seller premium is small.

The study concluded that Japan is the only market where a single-desk premium may exist, although it is difficult to disentangle it from payments for other characteristics such as cleanliness and uniformity.

UNQUOTE

http://www.usembassycanada.gov/content/can_usa/pdfwheat.pdf

Canadian wheat exports to Japan = 1.2 million metric tonnes.

Giving a generous $20.00 premium (thats not "small") and that equates to $24,000,000.

Administrative expenses equate to $68,000,000 in 2003/04.

Vader - you are reading this "crap" ...what say you or have you been neutered like ITAC?

ITAC members apparantly had a meeting today in Saskatoon. Most likely to discuss T1 and the love in with the single desk. I'm sure Agriville was on the agenda. If you want to know what was on the agenda and own shares in a terminal, pick up the phone and ask the CEO's who were there - better yet, the Chairman. You have a right to know.

I'm like Chaff...show me that you are really maximizing returns for the western Canadian farmer and i'd be solidly in the single desk camp.

Actions today do not. And while farmers are worrying about how they are going to seed, the CWB's media machine is pumping out WTO BS.

QUOTE:
WTO members are aiming to reach a draft agreement by the end of next month. Language now in the draft provides for the continuation of so-called monopoly powers. However, details to be negotiated for disciplining future use of the monopoly "have the potential to severely undermine the CWB's ability to operate for the benefit of western Canadian farmers.

UNQUOTE

Farmers pay for this crap. It comes directly out of the pooling system.

Like the CWB managing your currency risk, doing nothing is taking a position.

IF you say nothing they have the right to spend your pooling money any way they see fit. And it aint for maximizing returns on your farm.

[parsley]

sawfly,

Farmers always presume that exporting means only to the USA and you've reflected that as well, "Maybe everyone could just line up at the border and sell into the U.S"

Organics sell into Europe and Asia.Good markets there.

We need no-buyback export licenses for Europe, Asia as well as the USA.

Parsley

[sawfly]

what is the problem with the buyback. i know red tape is pain.
are the buyback rates too high for the markets your selling into.
eg. selling to england assume the board sells to warburtons for 7.50 a bushel or averages 7.00 into england. is it not reasonable that the buyback would be 7.00 or so.
if your selling organic and get 14.00 you would pocket the differance.
you have displaced 7.00 sales into that market.
im not argueing here,just trying to understand the problem.

[sawfly]

or is your argument that you have created a totally different market with the organics , and deserve the full price spread

[sawfly]

chaffmiester
relying on monsanto press realeases for histroy is to say the least gulable.
if you remember , Focus on inputs was the time cdn. patents for glyphosate expired. a whole different version of history exists. you just have to look past the propaganda.

[chaffmeister]

Sawfly (for what it’s worth, this is fun)

I really think we’re saying the same thing.

Let’s see.....you said:
“just ask monsanto what happens when a seller joins your market, that isn’t under your control. Going to 2 sellers cut the price of glyphosate in half. “

And I said:
“Monsanto had a patent on glyphosate. It ran its course. Monsanto could not stop others from producing and selling it or similar products. The only reason that Monsanto could charge as much as it did was because IT HAD A PATENT.”

Monsanto was able to charge pretty much whatever the market could bear when it held the patent (as I have said) because it had control (your word). Sometime after the patent expired others joined in (as you said). Monsanto could no longer control the price and the price dropped (as you said).

The Monsanto Annual Report for 2000 (NOT a press release) confirmed the price impact on losing the patent. However, whatever Monsanto did to bolster the price or position Roundup through this process is meaningless to our discussion. There are only two important points here – and you and I both made them: (1) Monsanto extracted high prices for glyphosate while it could (because of patent protection) and (2) when others joined in (because they could) the price dropped.

The point you seem to miss is that the only way Monsanto could extract the premium in the first place is the patent. And, to get back to our discussion - the CWB doesn’t have one.

Now let’s see --- you believe the CWB propaganda and you call me gullible. Hmmmm…..As First Officer Spock would say, “Fascinating.”

[Vader]

A patent is a sustainable competitive advantage, while you have it.

Does the CWB have a sustainable competitive advantage?

[Incognito]

Glad to see you are alive, Vader and your boys are okay, too.

Being a steer does not come with many rewards...as I remember the ad campaign
suggesting.

I'm still in the show me camp..a là Jerry Maguire ...show me the money.

It is a critical juncture for the CWB and farmers...How bout playing the bull for awhile and use some of that market power on the farm income crisis...

[sawfly]

vader glad your back, you can hold down the fort for a while.