Wheat board faces extinction

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This article was published 04/05/2011 (5638 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The firestorm over the future of the Canadian Wheat Board has reignited.

Many believe that one of the first ways the Harper government will wield the stick of its majority government will be to end the monopoly the CWB has on Prairie wheat and barley.

At stake is Portage and Main’s role as the centre of the country’s grain industry.

On Tuesday, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz did not disappoint. He made it clear the majority Conservative government will move to eliminate the single-desk marketing function of the CWB.

This time, enabling legislation cannot be blocked by the opposition.

But the CWB does not plan on meekly allowing Ottawa to make it extinct.

Allen Oberg, the CWB’s chairman, came out swinging on Tuesday. He said as a farmer-controlled organization, “financed completely by farmers,” the CWB’s future, role and structure should be their decision.

“They (farmers) need to be the ones who make the decision on the future of the CWB, not the powers that be in Ottawa,” he said. “We respect the wishes of the Canadians who voted in the election and we are hoping the new government will also respect the wishes of farmers here in Western Canada.”

The CWB anchors the grain industry cluster in downtown Winnipeg where its 400-person head office is neighbours to Richardson International, Cargill Canada, Parrish & Heimbecker, Paterson Global Foods and Canada Grains Council.

Oberg said the way the act is written, a producer plebiscite needs to be held if any major changes are made to the board.

But Ritz, minister responsible for the CWB in the last Harper government, made it clear the new government has no intention of holding another plebiscite. “We already did that,” Ritz said. “It’s called a general election…. At the end of the day, I ask them to respect democracy as well.”

Those fighting words effectively revive the war that has been waged — with a brief respite over the last couple of years — since the Harper Conservatives first took office in 2006 on a platform that included eliminating the board’s monopoly.

A barley plebiscite in early 2007 that featured a muddling “third” option produced results showing 62 per cent of farmers wanted open marketing of the key crop. But the same plebiscite showed a slim majority of Manitoba farmers voted to maintain the CWB’s monopoly and the most popular choice among Saskatchewan farmers was to retain the board’s role as the single-desk marketer.

(The three options were to retain the monopoly, allow farmers to sell through the board or elsewhere or get the board out of barley altogether.)

Oberg said the CWB maintains it would be untenable for the board to go toe-to-toe with private companies in marketing Prairie wheat and barley. He said examples of voluntary marketing boards in Australia and Ontario “have not fared well.”

Doug Chorney, president of Keystone Agricultural Producers, was diplomatic in his remarks, saying his membership covers the spectrum of opinion regarding the future of the wheat board.

But he said, “If we were asked for guidance, we would say to consult with producers before making changes to the monopoly.”

He added, “It’s hard to imagine the wheat board competing without any physical assets.”

But Ritz was adamant the day after the heady majority victory for the Conservatives that free and open marketing of Prairie grain is the way of the future.

“We have seen wheat, barley and durum acres shrinking in Western Canada and gaining in Australia where they deregulated three years ago,” Ritz said. “Farmers have voted with their air seeders and planters by putting in canola and pulses and corn and other non-CWB crops. We know changes need to be made and farmers need to be able to make that choice based on a strong business plan, not on a piece of legislation that is antiquated.”

Rolph Penner, the Manitoba vice-president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers, aggressive “pro-choice” advocates, said farmers need to know what’s going to happen as soon as possible because it will have an impact on seeding decisions.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca

Farmers eager to

get crop in ground

 

REGINA — Prairie farmers have their eyes on the sky in the hope that sunny, dry weather will let them get their crops in the ground and avoid a repeat of last year.

Chad Daubenfeld, who farms near St. Brieux, Sask., said last spring “the rain started and it never really quit.” Daubenfeld and his father have about 1,011 hectares, but only got half of it got seeded in 2010 because the land was waterlogged.

“It’s hard to say what this year will bring yet. We’re hopeful,” Daubenfeld said.

Daubenfeld said water-filled potholes on his land last spring never dried up and the ground is still saturated. Some of those potholes “are as big as 50 acres and some are the size of your house,” he said.

He’s prepared to seed around them.

“We need sunshine and wind to dry things out and to melt the snow along the fencelines.”

Daubenfeld’s farm escaped the wrath of a storm that hit southeastern Saskatchewan and western Manitoba last weekend, bringing up to 30 centimetres of wet snow to some areas.

That rain and snow will further delay seeding by about two weeks, according to the Canadian Wheat Board.

Bruce Burnett, the board’s director of weather and market analysis, said normally at this time, just under 10 per cent of the crop would be planted. But farmers are struggling to have one or two per cent planted now, he said.

“We are going to be having a very, very late start to this year’s planting in the Prairies,” said Burnett.

“The biggest concern I think is whether we get all of the intended area planted this year. Prices are very strong so farmers are looking to plant as much as they can in the upcoming year.”

— The Canadian Press