More “premium price” news from the Canadian Wheat Board;
“The prices we are asking in certain world markets are the highest that our barley marketers can remember in U.S. dollar terms,” Weisensel said. “This is an ideal situation for single-desk marketing as there are no competing sellers to push down the price, while the CWB is able to successfully price discriminate between markets in order to extract the highest return that each buyer is capable of paying for our high-quality barley. These premiums will be directly returned to Prairie farmers.” Sales of two-row malting barley made by the CWB since August 1 have averaged $325 Cdn a tonne, or more than $7 Cdn per bushel, as a landed freight-on-board (FOB) value.
In the past month, world barley prices have jumped $80 per tonne, which is a 25% increase, to a record $350[US] per tonne [$7.84 CDN per bushel] . The Ukraine previously accounted for 16% of world exports, but due to the poor crop this year export restrictions were imposed to ensure that there are sufficient domestic supplies to soften internal prices. In addition, Australia, which normally supplies one-third of world exports, is facing lower crop prospects and depleted old crop exportable supplies, according to USDA statistics.
(emphasis mine)
Update
The CWB is just being proactive I’m sure. They’re anticipating the Canadian loonie surpassing the US Greenback any day now. *sarcasm off*
“there are no competing sellers to push down the price” – or offer farmers a better price for their product. Monopoly boards screw everyone in this country except the unemployed political hacks who get appointed as overseers.
Again Mr. Weisensel is showing his lack of ability to function as an executive of a multibillion dollar company. The comments and actions of this man are an insult to Farmers and the employees of the CWB, in any democratic Corp this guy would have been tossed out on his butt a long time ago…..but not with Liberal friends will that ever happen….incompetence, stupidity, and shear ability to be a puppet are a must to follow this Liberal controlled CWB. But what does he care when his salary is 6 figures…..thank-you Farmers.
Hey, with a 97 cents US loonie, you’re only 25 bucks off the going rate. Given the bureaucratic overburden of a Crown Corp, that sounds about right.
Y’all should be happy for this opportunity to support your community.
What’s that? Your taxes amount to 63% of your income? Oh….
Never mind then. ~:D
This elevated market price will go on until after the Saskatchewan Provincial Election and then the commodity speculators will tank the price again – let the gluttony begin… just in case a real government comes to power in Saskatchewan that is.
Like everything else to a leftard, math is relative.
Forget the Americans.
Look at the price differential Sask to Ontario.
Sask is getting screwed over by $1.34-$1.94/tonne
Where’s that Rider Pride?
Dat is not fair. the piples ov da wes shoud send barleys to da ist and help de animals feed cheap for to get more quota milque for ka bec.-Borat Dion.
on the eave of the night of the long knives.
Jumped $80 a tonne in the last month to $350.
check.
Barley, and most other grains for that matter are on a hockey stick curve. $350 is the high… and it is today, and it is going higher.
CWB sales over the same period (actually a month and a half, not a month) That is 1/2 a month longer for people like Warwick who can’t do math any better than the “leftards”
That means the price was less than $270 a month ago…. and lower before that if you wanna go check the commodity history.
So sales over the last month and a half assuming an average of the price increase… is $310.
And the CWB got $325.
Sure I would love for the CWB to sell everything at the price record of the year.
That is not realistic.
It is not realistic for me to do it. (and I already seem to have cost myself $30,000 on part of the pea crop that was hedged at $5.50… That’s still waaaaay higher than the peak for the last couple years. And only a world wide drought sent it higher. It could easily be back at $5.00 It was a good decision at the time.
But lets talk about market reality. How much grain is actually traded near the top price? 5%?
By far the bulk is sold on the down-swing, halfway back down. That is alot of dollars not going into pockets like mine.
So the CWB sells year round, each month and all the time.
What is amazing is how good the CWB is actually doing this year.
2 months ago the CWB couldn’t buy or sell any barley because their mandate was possibly changing. I couldn’t sell any barley because the market was still in monopoly control. Want a reason for the poorer prices?? How about a war between the government and the CWB with farmers pitted on both sides?? My return is relatively the same with or without the CWB. Its the uncertainty that is costing me $$$. Several thousand of them. And whoops now it continues into next years crop too. Thanks guys.
You want to convince me the CWB is the devil… don’t do it with a story telling me that they have sold most of it in the top 75-85% of the market (current market, not throughout the last year when the prices were $100 lower).
open the books…..
I’m not a farmer and I don’t know much about the wheat board except this. When It’s gone it’s gone and don’t come to the taxpayers to help cushion the blow.
“2 months ago the CWB couldn’t buy or sell any barley because their mandate was possibly changing. I couldn’t sell any barley because the market was still in monopoly control. Want a reason for the poorer prices?? How about a war between the government and the CWB with farmers pitted on both sides?? My return is relatively the same with or without the CWB. Its the uncertainty that is costing me $$$. Several thousand of them. And whoops now it continues into next years crop too. Thanks guys.”
This doesn’t make any sense. Either the CWB is an active market player, or its not. You couldn’t sell any barley because the market was in monopoly control? WTF? If the market has as much external pressure as it appears then you couldn’t sell because CWB couldn’t sell. Other players seemed to come out all right. Blaming the fall off on govt push/pull is a strawman. Then you say your return is relatively the same with or without the CWB. Its not the uncertainty that causing you dollars, its the quality of the salesmanship.
Hey Barcs, the mandate of the CWB is work ‘for the benefit of all of Canada’.
That means the CWB is always making sure that there is surplus grain stocks held back in Canada for all of Ontario’s value-added malting and baking industry, especially when the world grain market prices are skyrocketing to historical highs.
The CWB absolutely will not let WESTERN grain farmers clean out their bins at these high prices because as the CWB has basically stated in the past-
‘If the CWB sells all the grain we have, before the end of the harvest year, it just means that we will have to import those same grains at the higher world prices and we won’t let that happen’.
Please note that it would not be the western grain farmer doing the importing, it would be the malting and milling industries that would be paying the higher prices to import the grain.
So the CWB is primarily looking after milling and malting interests, not grain farmers interests.
That is why I can state with authority that the CWB never ‘maximizes returns to the grain producers’.
That is not their mandate.
The CWB has used western grain farmers as sacrificial lambs ‘to work for the benefit of all of Canada’ since day one.
I’m quite surprized that the CWB can so easily fool a guy as sharp as you are.
Oh and one more point.
This explains quite nicely why its those eastern politicians in Ottawa who fight so hard to keep the CWB as a federal govt agency.
It makes the socialist eastern bunnies feel like captains of industry.
“I’m quite surprized that the CWB can so easily fool a guy as sharp as you are.”
Fooled? no. I am not a supporter, but I am not opposed to it by ideology either.
I just figger that based over the long term their marketing and my marketing will net out to about $0.
Anyone that thinks they will make millions by removing it, or lose millions by losing it is just deluding themselves.
When that liebral judge ruled the gov. couldn’t circumvent the cwb…and barley dropped a buck a bushel the next day,…..that tells the story for the cwb!
Thank God their not handling my canola, flax etc.
Time for equality, east and west!!
Actually, Barcs, ideology (or theology as a Western Producer writer suggested) has nothing to do with the reason the CWB is going to lose its monopoly power sooner than later.
All thru federal govt literature they claim that Canada is a ‘free and democratic country’.
Well a free and democratic nation cannot have its own federal govt discriminating against a small group of its citizens because of a little item called the Canadian Charter of Rights.
The reason a country adopts a Charter of Rights is to protect the citizens against arbitrary and discriminatory laws passed by govts.
And it is a fact that the CWB has been infringing on the individual rights of western grain farmers since 1943.
But the Charter of Rights in 1981 requires that all govt legislation that infringes on individual rights to pass something called the Oakes Test.
Too long to splain here, but basically it a test used to decide the importance of why the govt needs to abrogate individual rights in the proposed legislation.
Now how and why did the Liberals, boasters of human rights, pretend that the Charter did not apply to the CWB for the last 27 years?
And especially when lawyer Ralph Goodale changed the CWB act in 1998.
Is he just a sloppy lawyer who ignored the Charter or was it deliberate?
There isn’t a lawyer in this country smart enough to argue a case in support of the CWB to continue to exist in its present totalitarian format.
Selling grain is probably the world’s second oldest profession and is hardly of national importance when we always produce much more grain than can be consumed by us. That doesn’t pass the Oakes Test.
The only time the govt has the right to temporary control of grain production and selling is during a time of natural catastrophe or war.
Which is exactly why the CWB became compulsory in the first place, ie WW II in 1943.
Even Justice Trugeon who wrote the 1935 CWB Report stated that the government has no business in the grain trade because a functioning commodity market does the job.
If the CPC govt does not make changes to the CWB legislation to free up western grain farmers quickly, and get it passed unamiously by the House of Commons, it would be a very black mark on them also.
And Western Separatists might start howling.
Or does somebody want to tell me why the federal govt can continue to break the laws of the land over a guy selling a bucket of his own moldy grain?
As a wag once pointed out, lawlessness by governments eventually leads to lawlessness by the people.
Hark, do I hear the trucks starting?