U.S. Export loan program

[Fransisco]

There were many years when my hogs paid the bills for my grain operation, now it's the other way around. Which is exactly the way I thought it would always be, one balancing out the other.

Don't count pigs, or cattle for that matter, out yet the cure for low prices is low prices. When this thing bounces back it's going to give some people whiplash.

Yes, there's folks calling for a bailout but I'm not one of them. It'll only slow down the recover and draw out the pain.

[Fransisco]

BTW- Agstar and Beetle I notice that the latest 2008-2009 PRO came out yesterday and the Board is predicting that for spring wheat they will do about as well as the US farmer who sold his entire crop for the worst price on the worst day of the crop year.

http://www.siemenssays.com/?p=17164

You guys may hate freedom and the open market but it sure pays a heck of a lot better than your favourite government run Popsicle stand.

[haveapulse]

Way to go Larry, excellent points.

The reality of policy is we fail to have the vision and generational follow through to form a comprehensive plan which forms a completed picture.

The CROW is an obvious example. Lobby groups called for change saying value add would follow, then they we as an industry failed to call for fiscal policy to insure the transtions into value add followed. Not only for value add but for our road networks which faced with an increased volume of grain traffic deteriorated at our local expense..

The Liberals sold us down the river, but we were happy to drift.

Now we lobby for bio tech wheat, without asking for some method to insuring that the cost of global technology is equitably distributed.
Excuse me?

While it may be amazing to have plant genetics that potentially include drought free plants, we will also potentially loose the "weather related production" cycles that buoy prices.

Therefore it will be important to have a method to insure that costs of biotech genes are not increasingly paid by farmers in first world countries without equivalent return, and yes the CROW is a good example where we called for change and
we managed to achieve a one sided balance sheet.

Now we pay on average 55$ per metric tonne to get to grain from port to the farm, and we do not have the promised local market which was supposed to miraculously appear. And the cost of maintenance our road network has skyrocketed, not to mention that we all now own or hire a super B to go anywhere with our grain.

Be careful what you ask for.

As for export credit, you need this to trade and it is increasingly difficult in this economy to qualify buyers. Lucky CWB has a government backstop, the private trade does not. While EDC has increased their budget they have tightened their process.

The US again proves its ability to see a problem and react in a timely fashion.

A concept that aludes Canada. HOwever with Iggy looking to make ground out west, one can only hope. Perhaps his first task would be to address the hole in policy left by Goodale and Co.
Then realize their CWB poliy is costing our industry huge opportunity.

We can only hope.

A plan is better.