CWB, Where is the rest of our wheat money?

[TOM4CWB]

Recent news reports have highlighted that Australian wheat farmers are receiving the highest price in history for their wheat.

So thought I should do a cross check on the CWB vs US export market sales.

I went to Internet site: - JO_GR850 Portland, Oregon - Tue Mar 27, 2001 - USDA Market News which links from the Minneapolis grain exchange internet site.

Bids for grains for 30 day delivery to United States export ports
in dollars per bushel are on this site.

I was very concerned with what I found!

It has been generally accepted that a #1CWRS 13.5 and a #1 DNS 14 spring wheat are equivalent in value.

We are approximately in the mid range of the trade in spring wheat over the last 7 months, and today’s prices at Portland and the Great Lakes Duluth are reasonable averages for the values of CWB PRO’s for CWRS in Vancouver or Thunder Bay.

1. #1CWRS 13.5 at Vancouver B.C., 2000-01 PRO$ 5.69/bu
#1DNS 14.0 at Portland Wash. March – April$ 6.68/bu*

2. #1CWRS 13.5 at Thunder Bay ON 2000-01 PRO$ 5.01/bu**
#1 DNS 14.0 at Duluth-Great Lakes March-April$ 5.35/bu*
(truck sales)

http://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/JO_GR850.txt

*US conversion at 1.56
**Standard 25.00/t deduct for shipment to St. Lawrence export shipping position.


How is the efficient CWB machine single desk monopoly returning me more, when they are loosing my farm a dollar a bushel?

Why are Vancouver Sales still cross-subsidising Thunder Bay Sales?

Could someone please explain why the CWB black hole is sucking up all this money?

[chas]

Tom4cwb send these figures to Professor Gray please, lets see if he has an answer for this. Chas

[wilagro]

Why is it that the CWB knockers are always comparing spot prices in the USA with CWB prices? Whine, whine is all that I ever hear. The CWB has given more stability in pricing and marketing to Canadian grain producers than ANY of the multinational (USA dominated)companies. Quit whining and give support to something that is OURS before it is destroyed.

[parsley]

One real true Canadian kind of farmer bought a heifer at a sale to put into his herd and he called her CWB. She ate a lot, looked sleek and looked like she'd kick out a big fat calf. She didn't.

Her first was a scrawney little heifer that had the "sucking calf" bulgey eyes and the telltale long nose, browned on each side and almost hairless from frantic sucking. But CWB was tame and quiet and was the first to follow the truck when he called the cows to feed them. And CWB looked good in the herd compared to a lot of his heavy-milking skinny cows with calves damn near bigger than the mammas that he couldn't seem to fatten up.

Through the winter, he taught his kids to brush and curry CWB. She lapped it up. That spring, the whole family celebrated the birth of CWB's lineback bull calf. She wasn't a particularly good mama, but she tolerated her baby. And as the years went, CWB developed into quite an impressively big fat cow. There was pride to be had in her size.

Every fall, her skinny little calf that was shipped to market was averaged with the whole lot of calves. Not one of them wanted to discuss the weight of CWB's calf though ..nobody said a word. Year after year, he was sure she'd deliver him a whopper , but year after year, she didn't. And year after year while the skinny-assed cows kept the farm going, the true-blue Candian boy just couldn't part with his favorite cow. But he always pointed with pride at the big fat cow when he said, "and she's OURS".

Parsley

[Vader]

wilagro

I guess we tend to compare USA spot prices with the CWB average prices because they are ALWAYS BETTER!!!!!

Also I don't like the CWB average prices because they are driving me into bankruptcy and destroying a lifestyle here on the Canadian prairies.

wilagro, are you a real farmer? How many neighbors do you have that are going to continue farming in the next 5, 10, 15 years? Do you have a son? Is he going to farm? If so, how is he going to trick a nice young bride into living in a rural area where she will have no neighbors, no decent roads, no hospitals, no schools and basically a really shitty life?

Sure this CWB system works like a well oiled machine. A fat cow as parsley says. But who does it work for? It works well for consumers. We are subsidizing their food bills. In fact we subsidize food bills in 70 countries. In return they send us strawberries in the winter, oranges, sanyo TV's, Hyundai cars etc. etc. But it isn't the farmers who are consuming all these items. It is the voters in Quebec and Ontario that are consuming all the stuff that we farmers pay for with our wheat and barley. Did you know that Saskatchewan exports out of Canada $100 Million worth of Spring Wheat every month. Not including durum or barley. That is $100,000,000.00 of foreign exchange dollars for spring wheat alone every month.

Yes the system works well for the consumers in Ontario who by the way also elect the federal government which by the way makes all the rules including The Canadian Wheat Board Act and Gun Control Act and Endangered Species Act and the list goes on.

Some day the farmers will wake up. Will they be able to change this awful mess or will the American Corporate Grain Merchants have bankrupted us all and taken over our farms. I can't understand the CWB/Ottawa game plan that is bankrupting us and handing over our industry to the likes of Cargill, CoonAgra and Louis Dreyfuss. I guess Ottawa would rather be in bed with these guys than handing out subsidy payments to a few thousand whining farmers who some day might control the worlds food supply.

[ianben]

Hi All
Looks like the argument is going round again.
I see the CWB needs some reform but fail to see how this is going to solve the problems faced by farmers worldwide.
The ones Vader talks of in his third paragraph They are my problems here in England and I am sure are the farmers problems in the US too.
So what do you expect from the changes you suggest?
I dont think the grass will be that green when you get there!!!!
Did anyone attend one of those farmcorp meetings??
I would like to hear what you thought of the idea.

Regards Ian

[TOM4CWB]

wilagro,

I am sorry that you think all I want to do is sell my grain through the US and US grain companies.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I do however need the CWB to be competitive with the US, and yes it would be nice from time to time if the CWB returned a premium for my grain above US prices, like the Australian Wheat Board is doing!

Australia allow competition, and it has not destroyed their system.

Ontario single desk selling allows competition, and even boast that they can and do do better than open market buyers in many examples!

Why is the CWB afraid?

What is the CWB afraid of?

I heard on the CBC a few months back a very interesting series on humanity.

The author insisted that if we do not allow each other the freedom to make decisions for ourselves, then we are just animals with the strongest person being the winner, and most powerful.

This involves guns, and violence, and is an unforgiving and destructive way to end civilization.

Please give us the freedom to use our God given gifts and talents and maybe voluntarily we could work together, for the benefit of all of us?

Would that be so bad to try to make things better so my sons would want to farm, or when I turn my farm over to them is it still going to be considered child abuse?

[chas]

Wilagro: I have been pro CWB type of marketing without the government inference. But now I agree with Tom4cwb we do need a no cost license for export and for valued added domestically. Tom has mentioned in another thread that its been rumored the the Alberta Government is considering and offset program to refund buy back cost to farmers who want to export or create a value added industry for their grain and by pass the CWB. Legally this appears to be the only way to give freedom from the CWB for producers and value added industry within our province.
Alberta has done the offset program before when they refunded freight cost in the feed grains to create the livestock feeding industry in Alberta. This did cause the Crow Freight Rate to be illimated for the grain farmer. The Alberta Government can now do the right thing by creating the offset on the buy back to give individual farmers the opportunity to profit on export or value added at home without paying the buy back.
A three year trial would not hurt anything in the Province of Alberta's Agriculture Industry and would prove advantageous to all grain farmers. The cost to the province should be no more than what they are paying now. Might be better in the long run when it is proven to the CWB there is another way.
Chas

[AdamSmith]

Wilagro where you see stability, I see a dull, unresponsive, lathargic patient that is darn close to flatlining. The patient is the wheat farmer on the Canadian Prairies.

And what does Canadian have to do with anything anyway? This isn't a school science project where you can't do something because someone else is doing it. Or because your neighbour (whom you dislike)is doing something you have to do the opposite.

Jeez, Wilagro when will it sink in to some people that there are alot of farmers in MB, Sask. and Alb. who dislike the CWB, they dislike what it represents, they dislike the job it is doing, they dislike having to be forced into it's company. But what they dislike most of all is having to listen to others tell them to shut up, quit whinning and be thankful you have the CWB to protect you from all things big, evil and American.

To Ianben, I know this must seem awfully tiring to you but before we can even attempt anything new in western Canada we must free ourselves from the CWB and all it's regulatory burdens.

It's not a question of thinking one thing is better than the other. It's wheather one should be forced into doing what one doesn't want to do while being prevented from doing what they wish to, or having to associate with people one would prefer not to associate with.

AdamSmith

[Vader]

I just want to thank Wilagro for stimulating this most recent discussion and I anxiously await his rebuttal.

I hope he was serious and didn't just make those comments tongue in cheek for our benefit.

[parsley]

From an article titled "Average CWB salary $51,000/year" written by Moira Wright and published in Grainews, there werwe approximately 450 employees at the CWB earning an average of $51,000.00 /year in 1993!!!!

The CWB refused to release their salary scales. They are exempt from freedpm To Information.

Can you imagine what the salaries would be in 2001????

That accounts for a good whack of your wheat money.

Parsley

[parsley]

Ianben, if you look under the thread...Farmcorp....I posted some meeting results for you.

Parsley

[ianben]

Thanks Parsley
Much apresiate your time and trouble. They sure have big ideas 70million tonnes phew!!! Will need massive support for that!
Does not sound to good if poor attendance at their meetings and that is probably the volume they need for it to work.
However I still think something along these lines is the answer, if the family farm is to survive.
You may need to reform your CWB first but I do not think it will give you the long term future we all desire.
I still think we all think each others system is better than what we have ourselves, but no system produces what we NEED a future for our children.

Thanks again Ian

[CWBRules]

wilagro,

I'm with vader on this one. Were's your clever retort?? Don't worry about being out numbered cause I'll jump on the bandwagon with ya.

See:

The CWB is beneficial for all wheat and barley producers. The state only has our best interests at heart. The CWB is a price giver, NOT a price taker.

*Now where did I put my hammer & sickle???*

CWBRules

[TOM4CWB]

Boy,

I can see the smoke rising from the east already, you guys, don't get them too mad, they might send CISIS after you!

How will we seed all this wheat if we are all in jail, lighten up a little already??!!