Natural Gas and Feed Wheat and Barley

[TOM4CWB]

Chas,

The point really is that I do not want to export to the US at all!

Freight costs 50% more to get to a pacific port, and if we could have the innovation of competition, Western Canadian farmers could do $20.00/t better than US prices!

This is where I am headed, are you really satisfied with the prices the CWB provides on "lower quality" wheat and barley?

I thought you didn't grow any of this product?

So am I supposed to ship my #1CWRS 13.5 to the US and rip the pooling accounts off for $15-20/t. Would that make you happy?

I don't get it Chas, am I supposed to become a CWB theif, and be bribed with your money?

[chas]

Tom4cwb: No I don't grow lower quality wheat or barley because the world price doesn't cut it, the domestic open market doesn't cut it' the CWB doesn't cut it and $20 more a tonne won't cut it.
Competition, what might that be wheat burning stoves.
As for being a thief, suit yourself.
God only knows a support a bunch of them already, their called politicians. Chas

[TOM4CWB]

Chas,

All I want is for people to be able to make an honest living, without being required to lie, cheat and steal from my neighbours.

The CWB started my whole fight because they expect me to do the above things, and a long as they are paying me, it is all supposed to be fine.

Andy M had a choice in 1994.

He could do a feed barley buy-back with his unregistered barley, by law it can only be graded and bought by CWB this way.

If he did this he could only sell it as feed in the US.

The other choice was to refuse to lie and just haul his grain.

Andy chose the second choice and never to this day has the CWB properly charged him for breaking the CWB Act.

If farmers are actually breaking the law by just hauling their own ungraded grain, then why does the CWB refuse to charge us for breaking the CWB ACT?

Could it then be proved that the CWB is breaking NAFTA Regulations?

WHy did the CWB Stay my charges when I hauled across the border without an export license?

Could it be I was not breaking the law?

[rockpile]

Gas rebates and other small items:
Tom4, I was not talking about the 150 dollars, but the 6 dollars per gj, which may well lead to farmers paying less for nat gas this year than last year. This could be countervailable under Nafta, so keep your heads up. Question you might answer, Tom, would these supports be in place if this was not an election year? Also, in many of your comments, like on durum prices, you imply that the CWB sets the mark. What about world market and supply situations? You can't jump in and out of globalization that easy. Also, if Andy M was such a freedom fighter, how is it, that in court documents, it was proven that only a meager handful of the 90 some truckloads he hauled to the US were of his own grain, and for the rest he was a buyer and a broker - and nothing more than a cherry picker. Did he become a freedom fighter before or after he got caught? By the way, it is ironic that it was American authorities who caught him without an export license and not Canadians. Quite frankly, Tom4, as much as the CWB irritates you, I haven't seen a better alternative put forward, unless we get matching dollars in support with our US counterparts. Laissez-faire capitalism didn't work 'then', and it sure doesn't work now. Enjoy your gas bill.
Rockpile

[TOM4CWB]

Rockpile,

I find it interesting r
that you bring this up about Andy M

I know of farmers in southern Manitoba that bought fleets of new trucks doing "legal" CWB transactions!

I know that Cargill made millions doing legal CWB transactions and shipping across the border at the same time.

Take a look at Andy M, Cargill, and my freind with the fleet of new trucks!

Cargill in doing quite well, the guy with the fleet of new trucks was happy and looked prosperous!

What about Andy?

I talked to him the other night, and recently Farm Credit foreclosed on his farm, and he basically has absolutely nothing left!

Please tell me who profited, and who went to jail?

Farmers were the losers including Andy.

Now why are the good guys the guys who took farmers money, and the bad guys the ones who were standing against farmers being taken to the cleaners?

[chas]

Did anyone ever think that their may be a (for lack of a better word) conspiracy between Cargil, ADM and others to break the farmers into getting rid of the CWB. They have been very successful in the USA and South America of keeping farmers disorganized. Maybe we have a Corporate and Government conspiracy to keep farmers disorganized Maybe throw in the CWB too. But maybe thats just thoughts coming back to me from my days as a policeman, when it looks,smells and walks like a duck its probably a duck.
One thought I've had is that wheat is quite a different commodity than all the rest that we grow. Ever one in world grows wheat and everyone consumes wheat, may years there is a surplus and it is heavily subidized. Its easy to buy and hard to sell. As someone said it is 13.5% protein and 86.5% politics.
Tom4cwb I like your thread on making an Alberta Wheat and Barley Board with more producer input than government input. Chas

[TOM4CWB]

Chas,

I don't agree that Cargill and ADM are working to get rid of the CWB.

The CWB allows Cargill and ADM to make assured profits, nowhere else in the world is the grain handling charges as high as here, in a commercial sense.

Cargill and ADM will learn the quirks of a system, and then turn them into advantages to profit from them. They do this all around the globe. I remember about 15 years ago when Cargill first came in a big way by buying the government terminals. The comment then was they had not invested in Canada because they did not beleive that the system would be around long enough without major changes, because it was so profitable!

Big guys are good to work with in a system, they can provide efficiencies that the rest of us can learn from. Therefore they deserve reasonable profits, they think of innovative ways to get things done for less cost.

If we refuse to involve them in Canada, then other places in the world will be more efficient than we are, because they involve multinationals when we did not.

We would then be at a competitive disadvantage, and be less profitable than we could be.

Many large players do not want very profitable conditions.

Why?

When things are too profitable, then lots of new money is invested which makes a system overbuilt, with too much capacity. Then all players have a tuff time but when some go broke, the plants still exist and go on to still compete at 20 cents on the dollar.

The Canadian grain handling system is now in this phase.

We are overbuilt and at some time an adjustment will work its way through the system, but it is clear that the concrete and steel was built because there is a viable long term good investment in the grain business in Western Canada. This is the good news!

If the new terminals had not been built, then the grain growing business would have really been in trouble!

Therefore I beleive we need all players, co-ops, multinationals, and independents like Pioneer. This way we have an efficient system and remain competitive on the world stage.

This can only be good for grain farmers in the long term.

[chas]

Well we have come full circle on our problem. But I'am back where I started on this website still trying to get $2 or $3 more a bushel for each commodity that we grow. That is a world wide problem. Lets comment in your last thread Tom. Chas

[TOM4CWB]

Chas,

Let us say wheat is 8.00 instead of 5.00, Canola is 9.50 instead of 6.50, and barley was 4.50 instead of 2.25.

I ask you where would we put all the extra grain that there was no market for?

Who would store it?

Wouldn't the result create an economic disaster?

Wouldn't it be better to create products that people and consumers are actually willing and happy to pay for?

THis I beleive should and must be our objective. I do not see the CWB having enough flexibility to be able to facilitate, rather than deciding what is best for our farms.

Market signals, yes ones that really require intuition and close comunication with the specific customer are a must to acheive this type of a value adding system.

Could the CWB do this?

They do it with the Feed Mills, why not do it with "designated area" wheat and barley farmers?

[ianben]

Hi Tom
The prices are right. This is the farmers disease.
We do not have the right to sell all we can produce.
We ourselves must store the supplus as an insurance against a bad crop.
Perhaps a years production and then just replace what we have sold at a profit.
This is how everybody else except in the world markets.

WHY SHOULD WE BE DIFFERENT????

Regards Ian

[chas]

Tom4cwb; I think you are starting to penatrate my thick skull. Show me a profit and I'll produce a pile of it and drive the price down. When I first came on the thread my idea was and still is to stablize prices which would stablize supply. To create this dream the margin also has to be stablized. Nice dream. Producers need more competitive ways to market their grain and the powers of the CWB need some changing to gain some of my dream. Just a small improvement in the price could be obtained by a freer cwb would be beauitful.
After all this time farming I'm finding out that I know very little about anything. But I bet this website has been alot more interesting lately. Chas

[parsley]

Rockpile, your words about Andy McMeachan,
"and for the rest he was a buyer and a broker - and nothing more than a cherry picker"

and thalpenny's words
"This in effect prevents 'cherry picking' of the most lucrative, and often closest markets away from the returns of all farmers."

come right out of the same closet don't they?


Scroll down to the thread Export Manufactured Feed Agreement, Rockpile, for a comment to you.

I'll get back to you later,
Parsley