CWB Director Henry Vos -Why we need CWB election reform

[Fransisco]

You don't like my opinion fine, everybody gets that. I don't particularly like your shoes either.

Now what about the numbers? Or are you one of those empty shirts who is all about the 'tone'.

[parsley]

You deserved it. So suck it up. lol. Your're lucky you didn't get hung out on the clothesline by your Spock ears. Pars

[Fransisco]

Common stub, BS is one of the easiest things in the world to counter. All you need are reason and facts. Lets see some.

[charliep]

Perhaps one thing Henry Vos doesn't talk about is business
structure. I suspect this will be the leader of director
election reform.

A learning from this last year is $165 mln (or whatever) is
not enough in the contingency for the producer pricing
options let alone to deal with the overall pooling risk. If
this is not enough, who will finance this contingency fund?
When there is real money and perhaps the opportunity to
invest in other things (hard assets as suggested in the CWB
document - Harvesting Opportunites), will the traditional
vote structure of one person/business unit equals one vote
work? I suspect that model will more likely be a new
generation coop where use of the business/ownership
interest will be the way most will want to see the voting
structure developed. IMHO.

How do other see the voting structure developed? Does
the CWB document "Harvesting Opportunities" offer a
vision of the future. The issue of governance is not
addressed by the way.

[parsley]

Let's say you have a million acre Corporation Fire farm with twenty thousand shareholders.

Every sale made, according to the present legislation, must be first legally sold to the Board. So everyone is tied to the CWB.

Does Corporation Fire get one vote the same as Grabag Farms Inc? Or do twenty thousand get individual proxies? Plus they maybe have their own individual Grabag operations to boot?

If the Board is made voluntary, it solves things.

If not, it's a nightmare.

Pars

[chaffmeister]

Why do we still need Permit Books?


According to the CWB:

"It is important for the CWB to have accurate and complete information about actual producers and interested parties. This information assists in developing sales plans and will be used to establish voter lists for future CWB board of directors’ elections."


So the CWB knows who's big and who's small, who's still farming and who's renting their land out. This helps them develop "sales plans"?

And they know around 29,538 Permit Books don't see any deliveries. But only after the fact - when they "approve" the books at the beginning of the year they don't know this (or do they?). The Permit Book tells them nothing about future deliveries. So how does this help develop "sales plans"?


Let's not kid ourselves.

There is no purpose for the Permit Book except the voters' list.

My vote is to abolish the Permit Book.

[charliep]

The CWB producer survey provides a lot of information on the demographics of permit book holders. The last good information is in the survey schedule of the 2007 edition (this information was not released in the 2008 one).

http://www.cwb.ca/public/en/farmers/surveys/producer/

http://www.cwb.ca/public/en/farmers/surveys/producer/pdf/interview_062107.pdf

see questions 25 to 37 of the producer survey - interview schedule 2007.

Examples.

8% of the farmers who participate were under 35 years old. 21 % were over 65.

24.5 % of the participants had less than 640 cultivated acres. 20.1 % had more than 2500 acres.

47 % grew less than 250 acres of barley. 5 % more than a 1000.

38 % grew less than 250 acres of wheat (11 % didn't grow any wheat). 16 % more than 1000 acres.

[charliep]

Actually will change the age category slightly.

22 % were under 45. 21 % over 65. 57 % were in the 45 to 65 area.

[Hopperbin]

True chaff you don't actually get your permit book until your crop is ready to come off. And all sales and marketting can be done with contracting anyway. The CWB can still do everything as good as they have been doing it if you can call it doing good just as well without the permit book. What does it cost us anyway?

[gustgd]

great rant Frisco

I'd like to focus on the last part of Henry's letter,
the part where he talks about the

"organization moves on a track that is not in a direction that meets the needs of current and future producers". end quote

they are setting themselves up for failure by not focusing on the needs of those that do 80% of their business.
I'm not saying that we have to abandon the other 20%, just admit that they do have a cost to maintain membership.
For example in my local credit union their is a cost of about $5.00 a month to have an account.
There is no real need for this amount it probably only cost's a dollar but the other $4 is to clean up dead accounts.
As long as everything is rolled into the "all revenue minus administration column" we will never see changes in this organization

[gustgd]

Parsley

I don't get your wanting to have a catch all, lets call everyone farmers attitude (my words not yours)

Do you want to know how most 17 year old riggers I know make marketing decisions?
"Dad what would you do?"


The only way to get an accurate reading of opinion is by deliveries, and since many agree that the current CPC will never do that I propose minimum thresholds. Lets use the tax system if you gross more dollars on your school bus route than you do selling Wheat I would call you a bus driver not a farmer.
I pull my kids teeth yet I'm not a dentist, I cut my girls bangs yet if I call myself a barber I would get fined.
Why are you so anxious to call everyone who could plant a seed a farmer?

[chaffmeister]

How many definition of "farmer" do you need?

Governments already recognize farmers in order to allow them to use purple gas. I think the criterion is that you have to have $10,000 in annual farm commodity sales to qualify for purple gas.

If I'm not mistaken, each provincial government has a record of who qualifies.

My view is this: if you're a purple gas farmer, you should get to decide about the CWB. If you're not, you don't.