feeling cheated?

[ivbinconned]

"performance audits."!!

I agree and am confident that it would be sc****d as a government, liberal, supported entity.

Then they would be calling wilagrow and farmers-son for donations.

[Horse]

Sounds like a lot of wind . Just what is so wrong with the CWB Do you realy feel you can go make a sale to ouher countrys or are you oggiling over the USA market. I dont supose you think the yanks will welcome you with open arms do you?
As for being able to sell what you produce try to sell meat or eggs or milk products they are all regulated and for some good reason.

[cakadu]

I am going to wade a little way into this debate. Many of us have been talking value-added and producers marketing their own products for years. Throughout the BSE mess there was much said about producer owned packing plants, which would mean that someone would have to market the products. In the case of the CWB, would it not be the same? I agree that ALL grain producers should be free to market their products to whomever they choose and if that includes the CWB, then that is great because you've had a choice.

What I do wonder about is whether or not producers are willing to become marketers? Throughout the years on this site we've seen repeated messages about being producers, not marketers. To play in the world markets, which is where commodity prices are at, you would have to market grains on your own, or find someone with the expertise to do it for you and form a group using the skills of that person or persons.

How would you see that working?

[carebear300]

I hate to be the only negative one on this posting but unless I am completely out to lunch(which I might be) the conservatives will have considerable trouble in surviving for much over eighteen months. If you doubt it just try and visual putting 130 free thinking outspoken people in a room for only a couple of hours and you can soon see the major problem. We conservatives by nature have no patience for things that get bogged down in constant haggling,and we have a tendency to try and push things through as quick and as efficently as we can. Also part of our nature is to be very opinionated and at times exceedingly stubborn in our viewpoints, all qualities that in real life get things done but in this situation of a minority government will make things really difficult to hang it all together and stay in power. I hope you get the drift of what I am saying and I hope that three years from now that you all have the chance to remind me of how wrong I was.

[cowman]

carebear: You're probably right. About eighteen months is probably as good as it gets?
Hopefully in the eighteen months they can make some fundamental changes? The first and most important is put a system in place where the Mafia(Liberals) can't pull off these thefts? A system where the politicians listen to their constituents instead of the high powered paid lobbyist?
Linda: Was the CWB going somewhere? Ending the single desk monopoly doesn't end the option to still market your grain through them...despite the rhetoric? In reality there would in all probability be a lot more "value adding" once they lost their monopoly? Why wasn't Prairie Pasta built here? Why wasn't a huge American brewery built here?...the CWB.
How is it that Ontario farmers can market their grain without a single desk, but it is impossible here? Do you believe different parts of the country should be treated differently by the federal government? Isn't that discrimination? What about the rights of the prairie farmer who wants to market his own grain to whomever he wants?

[furrowtickler]

Re:cakadu.
every producer in Western Canada is a grain marketer, canola, peas, lentils, feed barley, canary seed, mustard, oats, and many more. That is unless all you grow is grains for the CWB.
You make it sound like the grain producer has absolutly no marketing savy.

[cakadu]

No, that isn't what I meant at all furrowtickler and cowman. I know why Prairie Pasta did not locate here and I understand the difference between the way those east of the Manitoba border get to market their grains versus those west of the Manitoba border can. I think their should be choice and if people want to stay with the CWB then that is just great. For those who don't want to work within the confines of the CWB that is also great - it just will come with more work.

The point I was trying to make - and it looks like I didn't make it - was that it takes a great deal of effort to market product whether it be your own or someone is doing it for you - at a price. Furrowtickler I am one of many who have been talking about value-adding, value-chains and putting more in producers pockets for over 12 years now and it has not been easy. Even during the BSE crisis there wasn't much uptake on it. We have been direct marketing our lamb for over 12 years and have built it up during that time. It hasn't been easy because marketing is sometimes a full time job in addition to the production.

The point is that it isn't as easy as one would think - nothing ever is. It takes a lot of hard work to market and opting out of the CWB will mean that someone will have to market your grain and that means doing more than just taking it to the elevator. That is selling it, not marketing it.

Re-read my earlier post and you'll see that I stated your points cowman. As someone who has a choice on how to market their product, I am all for grain producers having that same choice.

[cowman]

Well Linda, I think there are already some fairly competent marketers around for non board grains? Some of those boys over on the Commodities board seem to know what they are doing?
Locally we have one small grain dealer who sure seems to know how to move product! Don't know if he makes people a lot of money but he sure gets a lot of grain and canola.
I tried to point out the CWB wouldn't be folding if there was a dual market? Just like the Ontario board they could continue to operate? Ending the single desk would just give farmers more options.

[cowman]

Wilagro,Horse the only reason you guys want to keep selling to CWB is because its way to easy to just let someone else do the work for you, and taking their word that this is all you can get for your product. I hope dual marketing takes affect and I am proven wrong that I can't do better than CWB. Bet that I'm right though, I will do better on my own.

[cakadu]

I don't think that the CWB would fold at all, in fact they would really work to keep that outfit going. Like many things started decades ago, it doesn't necessarily fit with the way things need to be done now and in the future. Problem is that they have so much tied up with it and around it they can't see their way clear to getting rid of it, or at least changing it.

Can anybody give me, and perhaps others, some history in terms of why it even came about in the first place?

The one thing I have learned over the years is that you are either for it or against it - there is no in between.