American Tariffs

[achiliak]

Hey guys, I must be really dumb or just plain missing something. With the announcement today of an increase in the tariff on grain going to the States, citing subsidies on the Canadian grain, I would like to know a few things. Where is this subsidy? Who is paying it? How much is it? How much is our grain REALLY worth then, if we were to have no subsidy? Doesn't this create a "catch 22" situation in that we now have lower prices to the producer which then makes us have to market at even more below cost which constitutes a greater scale of "dumping" which means that the Americans will have to increase the tariff even more in a few months? What do we do now with grain that is worth about 50% of the cost of production (drought, hoppers, expensive inputs, etc.)? We were thinking of switching our entire production system over to cattle, but not sure if that is a good idea now. So we continue to loose money on all aspects of farming, with each day's news just making things worse. We have spread enough hopper bait in our garden to cover about 50 acres this year. Still lost about 50 to 70 percent of our production. The garden stinks with all the rotting carcasses, some rows have about 2-3 inches of dead hoppers in the bottom. Ecouraging!!!

[farmerfudd]

You're right. I don't think it's possible to understand the WHY in the new tarrifs. Our wheat board does a shitty jod of marketing/negotiating and the outcome is to penalize producers. Ever since cretien called bush a moron we've been getting screwed. All the gov. has to do is admit they don't know what they're doing, raise initial prices 50%, later say they were wrong again and its not called a subsidy.
This can't continue, even retail suppliers won't be able to dictate a direction to producers if their shareholders say get the hell out agriculture!