CWB Director Henry Vos -Why we need CWB election reform

[silverback]

I think he means it is priceless how the people who believe in freedom of choice and association, can consistently quote facts and figures that can never be logically countered by anyone with a hint of common sense.

Or, maybe he means the world price - less the cwb discount, is good enough for him.

[wade]

Was missing the "colorful commentary" as I am more of a fan of the group therapy of Happy Hour as opposed to AA.

[checking]

The gin part of the old cotton, although a more pure quality form, would have rotted anyone's guts out. I prefer the new six pack.

[checking]

It is disconcerting to know that an imposter is using another person's alias as in the previous post by the supposed "checking"

[vvalk]

Didn't realize that you were an actual farmer if you grow 50 tonnes. That is about 50 acres. If you grow 25% of your farm to board grains, thats 200 acres. No way are you an active farmer with 200 acres. Also I bet if you break it down further you will see that 5000 farmers do 50% of the deliveries.
What else that Henry gets to is the fairness of the board. The CWB is suppose to make it equal for all farmers. You hear the liberals say that the CWB has to protect the small farmer from big bad grain companies and large farmers. Look at the advantage, the CWB gives to small farmers with the deliveries. Even the other day, there is a call on durum. 45 tonnes per permit book. If I grow 3000 tonne of durum thats 1.5% but for a small farmer that will represent 25%.

[Fransisco]

I think small farmer is a misnomer here. 'Small' still assumes you can make a living doing this. These are at best hobby farmers and at 50-200 acres of conventional crops it's not even much of a hobby.

Non-farmers would probably be a better description.

The real farmers whose livelihood this all depends on are completely outgunned by the non farmers.

The wheat board therefore does not represent farmers.

And it is the entity that is 100% responsible for this state of affairs. It makes the voters list and sets and enforces the rules(or not). It's not the Americans, or the Conservatives or the futures markets that they can scapegoat this time round. They have deliberately set this up and fine tuned it over the last ten years so that farmers don't get a say while all the time pretending that they're being run by farmers.

Just like the claim to get us premiums it's simply not true.

[parsley]

You're have a quarrel. Someone yells, "Look at the chickadee," and the neck and the topic switches to chickadeess. Will we never learn?

The Wheat Board are experts at changing focus.

Who cares if a farmer has fifty acres? Of basil? And he's seventeen years old? And his boyfrined has a permit book too?

Do you really want to get into comparing operations and size? Or intelligence? Or gender? or political affiliation.

You see folks, once you have your export and interprovincial licenses for wheat and barley, no one will give a rat's ass if you have twenty acres or twenty thousand acres, because then you have the ability to adjust, to focus on net earnings, to focus on markets, to focus on buyer relationships, to expand, or even to make mistakes that plow you under.


Just like you do with canola, right? Do you spend time worrying and fretting about canola farm operations?


Focus on the issue.

Focus hard.

Focus on what you need.

You need a bloody license.

Scheesch.

Pars

[parsley]

If you are interesting in a job...... making up a new CWB voters's list, or revising the present one, or establsishing a benchmark of "What a Real Wheat Board Farmer Really Is and Does", then chase this car.

It'll get you a cushy Wheat Board job for probably five years and you'll get your name won a U of S in a great study which is bound to follow, that will be published in 2014, and that you will pay for.

And the best thing of all, it will serve to piss off the farmers that you hope will vote for marketing choice.

Hard to ask that young farmer for his vote and get it when he is "excluded" from the list of REAL farmers you've established, and particularly the young ones with two quarters of land, and a job in the oil patch.

The Board couldn't plan it better. Pars

[parsley]

So a guy with four hundred head of registered angus cows and selling four million dollars worth of breeding stock every year but growing one hundred acres of wheat on the only flat piece of land he owns is not a farmer? And he's the guy that buys all your straw bales? And bales your sloughs and buys all your frozen wheat and barley?

And you're gonna tell him he's not a "real" farmer?

Right.

Maybe the discussion has to right back to leadership.

Leadership doesn't bloody decide for me.

And don't ever, ever, ever forget it.

Pars

[Fransisco]

I have actually talked to the kind of cattle guy you described. This one can vote but doesn't, he doesn't give a rip about the issue one way or the other, says it doesn't affect him. He's honest and admits it, that he's a cattle guy not a wheat farmer and that it shouldn't be his decision.

Well pars maybe we should go the other direction then. Maybe every beekeeper, goat herder and greenhouse should get a vote as well. After all they're all farmers too.

[Fransisco]

I agree on export licenses, but how do we get them? Pretty please, with sugar on top?

I'm not big on these elections either, the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time when it comes to marketing has never made any sense to me.

But like it or not these crazy elections exist, the board fanatics use them to claim legitimacy and we have to deal with them.

[Fransisco]

That should have read "falsely use them to claim legitimacy".