53 Replies to “QOTW”

  1. Thanks for the post Kate. Both Lorne and Minister Ritz hit the nail square on the head, this is about freedom and property rights not about marketing. Minister Ritz satatement shows he believes farmers own their grain. Allan Olbergs statement shows he believes the CWB (read government) owns the grain.

  2. Was it Feb 09 or 08 that 50,000 bushels of hard red spring wheat brought over a million in Minot ND while Canadian farmers had to take 7.58 in Canada? Dear Mr Oberg, you might have found a few idiots who didn’t look hard at the wording of your Frank Graves style of asking if farmers liked the wheat board questionaire, did it read like “if the Canadian wheat board could pay for your mortgage and put gas in your tanks would you vote for it”? It is over. You stinking liberal theives have had 40 years of Turdohism and over 70 years of this prarie money sucking liberal abberation to line your pockets and not ours, is that not long enough to have all your offshore accounts full? Ritz will start the ball rolling to help the smaller free market farmers, before all we have is inbred one eyed cultists growing all our food and owning all the farmland.

  3. My brief personal contact with minister ritz left me with the impression that he is an extremely smart guy. The succinct, biting quote above confirms it. This is a huge victory for the cause of liberty in Canada.

  4. I could not be more sympathetic to those who are in favor of an “open market”…I am myself.
    BUT, since the time of Kings there has never been an “open” market in wheat. It has always been used as a tool for political purposes. The corporate grain companies are not patriotic in any way. Lets hope more competition comes in to play down the road.

  5. http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/featured/prime-time/867432237001/wheat-board-battle/1156419155001
    The only thing Minister Ritz misses is the dismal returns the CWB forces on the farmers under it’s domination. The are many years where a US farmer could have sold all his wheat on the lowest price day of the year, and still beat the pool price in Canada.
    CWB leadership is far left, elected with the same cherry picked voters list that produced this plebiscite result.

  6. My understanding is that most producers (as opposed to their landlords) boycotted the vote on principle. That principle being that one’s constitutional right to own and sell one’s property to whomever one choses without government interference is, a right of property. You don’t vote on rights, you exercise them.
    I agree with that stand and if the CWB Poobahs think this phoney rigged poll solves the question of the constitutional wrongs of a government marketing monopoly, they have their heads in a dark, moist, pungent place.

  7. A federal government who “get’s it”!
    Wow, who would have thought that freedom and liberty would have made inroads to Canada with one tar & feather election?
    A little like the Berlin wall coming down, no? “Mr. Harper, tear down this wall” – The great Gorbachev of our century.

  8. bartinsky, that was also when the great geniuses at the CWB spent a hundred million of our money liquidating hard red spring contracts because they couldn’ t figure out how to actually deliver wheat they had sold. They do better at marketing themselves than marketing our wheat.

  9. Even if the vote had been 99-1, you are still sending the ‘men with guns’ to the 1 percenters homes and forcing them to give up their produce.

  10. Sure this is good for freedom, and that should not be dismissed.
    But freedom does not operate in a vaccum. There are real consequences to the elimination of Wheat Board that are as dangerous to ignore.
    With a more open market, we will have with small, family owned farms what we have in other natural resources: large multinational corporations buying up and squeezing out the small and the local. This decision by Harper will be very hard on the small family farmer, who is already under a great deal of pressure, and who simply can’t compete against the big corporations. Which means even more corporate welfare as agriculture is more subsidized than most consumables.
    More importantly, it also means a big part of the base – rural farmers – will no longer be owners, will no longer be farmers, will no longer be passing the farm down a generation. Will they turn to the NDP? They have in the past and there is a part of the NDP that isn’t the urban latte drinking crowd as the vote results show. Don’t forget, the long gun registry will be gone by the next election too so Conservatives won’t have that stick to beat.
    We have to fight for and protect real freedom, with all its warts, not some fantasy freedom seen only through rose-coloured glasses. Because the farmers aren’t wearing those glasses and there are real cultural and political risks if we ignore their reality.

  11. Minister Ritz has just reduced the argument to it’s most basic premise. It’s who owns the grain, not who can best market it. The CWB now has to try to make the case that they should own the grain. Good luck, heh, heh.
    I wonder if they’ve cancelled their order for the Great Lakes freighters.

  12. Such a tough decision for a farmer. The CWB with all its infastructure paid by Farmers and Taxpayers along with its 450 employees all making more than many farmers they work for, vs the farmer 1 phone call and the ability to sell any grains anytime anywhere at the best price available. Last time I sold oats here in Alberta, I made a couple of quick calls to local buyers. Agreed on a buyer and price, they sent the trucks and picked up my oats and the cheque didn’t bounce. I can only imagine the wind up costs that the taxpayers will be stuck with. Heck they just ordered ships for the great lakes in some shadowy deals with former CWB bigwigs that had quit the CWB and set themselves up on the Great Lakes. Or the fact that all wheat farmers are held hostage by Manitoba and the Port of Churchill. More crooks milking the farmer. Stalin is Dead bury him… How about the fact that Trudeau extended the misery of the Chinese people under Communism by selling millions of bushel’s of wheat to China on credit. Which was eventually wrote off against the books of the government of Canada and the Canadian Taxpayer. Bury the CWB fast and deep…..

  13. Beware:
    What rubbish. A free market means better prices for the producer. Consolidation and the application of sound business practices on the AG sector has been a growing trend for decades – good profits may accelerate it and this is not a bad thing. Disconnecting the ownership of the land from those who work it is not a bad thing as it reaps huge rewards in productivity (I own an insurance bizness – I don’t own the building I operate it from) sure there will bs employees, bit there will also be owners – of consultancies, contract operators, brokers etc etc. What there won’t be is a govt operated monopsony that wastes billions and keeps farmers in it’s servitude.

  14. Be What You Wish For, Your comment was conjecture and speculation. Have you considered that the mythical farmer you conjure has chosen that lot in life because he/she loves freedom?

  15. You see the same BS in local Municipal Governments. Some counties and Municipal governments now have so much equipment and huge bloated staff, that they are now bidding against local contractors for work. Time that Canadian Taxpayers drained the SWAMP….

  16. Thanks Kate for picking this up.
    @ m, well said in a brief way.
    RFB is right, Stalin is dead, bury him.
    I have waited for decades for this to occur. We never farmed more than slightly over a thousand acres, so were not a corporate farm. It was the constant increase in input and capital costs that necessitated a gradual increase in the land base over the decades. Canola and other non board specialty crops were the money makers. Wheat was a rotation crop.

  17. Good luck lads! The freedom to sell wheat to whoever and whenever you want to has been a long time coming and long overdue.
    Treating the sale of wheat as a property right may be the very first baby steps in actually establishing enshrined property rights here in Canada…a person can always hope can’t they?

  18. Gord Tulk:
    You are not really reading what I’m saying.
    This is good for freedom, generally. This is probably good for the economy, generally. This is probably good for us in the cities making our already heavily subsidized food even cheaper.
    This is certainly good for big corporate farmers.
    But the free market doesn’t make everyone a winner. Almost always, the bigger fish swallow the smaller fish. Economies of scale weigh in. Distribution channels cut costs. Think about what Indigo Books has done to small, independent bookstores. Think about what big corporate agriculture has already done to small family-owned farmers.
    This could all be a good thing and likely will have good economic results overall. Even if it didn’t, arguments about freedom should not be based upon their economic merit or demerit.
    Still…
    All that good doesn’t mean that small, family-owned farms are not going to be hit by this change and oftentimes quite hard. There will be less of them and more corporate agriculture.
    Good for the economy? Sure. But all I’m saying is let’s not forget the other consequences. The free market doesn’t care about losers. But that doesn’t mean we should forget about them. They still vote.

  19. beware of what you wish for; The CWB quota system caused more small farmers to sell out than any other reason including thr Great Depression.The amount of wheat a farmer was allowed to sell was based on a quota system.In the 1960.s the board decided not to sell wheat because the price was’nt high enough.By 1970 the final quota for wheat was four(4) bus per seeded acre.If a farmer had 300 acres of wheat that he grew in 1969 and it produced 30 bus. per acre for a total production of 9000 bus.,he could sell at the end of July 1970 1200 bushels.He would have to store,at his expense 7800 bus.This was on top of the wheat that he could’nt sell from the previous years.The price of wheat was $1.25 for a return of $1500.It cost way more than that to produce and store the crop.Most sold out.

  20. When?
    When will the Wheat board and the Gun Registry and the Human Rights Courts, just to name a few, be gone?
    When will the Conservatives do something conservative instead of just promising to do something conservative about some old Trudeaupean holdover socialist dead useless bullshit like this?
    This is easy stuff.
    For the love of God, get on with it.
    Yadda yackity blah blah.
    How will you get rid of the Wheat Board when will you get rid of the Wheat Board, who is working on it , what is taking you so long?
    Do it!

  21. My favorite comment came from a woman who was celebrating the best harvest in her 22 years of farming & dismissed the results of the vote because “the majority of the farmers, measured in acreage” wanted the wheat board gone.

  22. Dizzy: And why do you think that is? Why do you think the largest farms are for this but the smaller farms are against? What impact do you think the removal of CWB will have? Good for big corporate “farmers” and not so good for small, family-owned farmers. That’s great for us in the cities, probably good for the economy, but pretty devastating for rural communities as more farmers are pushed off their own land.

  23. Beware – your perspective that big always wins does not explain companies like Yellow Tail Wineries, Cirque du Soleil, Apple and a whole host of others that have significantly outperformed. It also fails to explain why GM, Chrysler, Borders Books and a whole host of others failed. The primary reason that any business succeeds has to do with a well structured business plan that is executed and adjusted as required. The reason businesses fail has to do with a flawed business plan that is poorly executed and never adjusted. Government enterprises run the latter with a nod and a wink to subsidies, exemptions and legislated advantage. Successful PEOPLE run the former with hard work, creative strategies and a fundamental understanding of their core customer. In order to “level the playing field” and “be fair” statists step in and legislate an advantage to enterprises that should fail. The CWB is an anachronism that would never have survived this long without their legislative prohibition of competition.

  24. Beware:
    Bunch of nonsense, I know many “family-owned farmers” that have long wanted the CWB gone. If you’re talking about people seeding sixty acres, that’s not farming, that’s a hobby.
    Real shame about that internal combustion engine, devastated the draft horse community.

  25. Brian Mallard: “GM, Chrysler, Borders Books and a whole host of others failed”
    Really? How many car manufacturers are there in North America? How many local independent bookstores are there now compared to before Borders?
    I’m not arguing business plans. You can have a great business plan, but if a big multinational cuts their prices to squeeze you out, has distribution channels that close their doors to competitors, buy up all of the seed at reduced bulk prices, sue you and your family into bankruptcy if their modified crop seeds blow onto and grow on your farm… your business plan is as valuable as the ink it was printed with.
    You will find lots of small successes.
    You will find less and and less of these in agriculture and wheat farming now because of this decision.
    I’m not saying whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. It is a real thing, though. The free market is, ultimately worth it, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t casualties. The ra-ra here that everything will be great and there will be only upside to eliminating the CWB is naive and borders on being insensitive, but it also opens up huge opportunities to opposition parties.

  26. Yes Kate, thanks for posting this.
    if i heard this correctly on sun news yesterday, there are 30 thousand farmers in western canada, and the cwb sent out 68 thousand ballots.
    if that doesn’t smell fishy, i don’t know what does.
    my vote was sent to Mr Ritz, i wanted to make sure it was counted correctly.
    this can’t happen fast enought for me.
    like bartinsky said, about four years ago wheat south of the line was around 24-26 bucks for spring wheat and 34-36 for durum at the high’s.
    i don’t grow much wheat, as i hate the cwb, but that year i had 5000 bushel #1 sitting here.
    still p. o’d over that!
    i market everything else around here myself and would like the oportunity to do the same with my wheat and barley.
    get on with this Mr. Ritz, the faster the better as far as i’m concerned.
    like today, would be just fine with me!

  27. The objection about small family farms is rubbish. I can make more money on a per acre basis growing non-board crops irregardless of how many acres I farm!! The little guy getting squeezed out is occurring (and has been occurring for a long time now) under the CWB. That has nothing to do with offering market choice. If that were the case then Ontario would have nothing left but corporate farms and that isn’t the way it is. This sounds like someone has bought into the fear mongering that the Wheat Board is spouting in its last hurrah.
    Will they turn to the NDP? Heck no!!! Our rural riding has never voted NDP in its history (I think it went Liberal once way way back). The NDP have nothing to offer and all the Liberals have is lies and empty promises – farmers remember the way that their issues were dealt with under the Liberals and I laugh every time their ag critic opens his mouth. The fact that the NDP are for the Wheat Board speaks to how out of touch they are with farming today – I guess no one should be surprised as they are a socialist organization.
    Get rid of that horrible institution – the Wheat Board and let Western farmers have the right to sell their own property!! The sooner the better.

  28. Beware of Beware…Beware answer me this. Ontario farmers are not fighting to get the CWB and single desk marketing. Since they went to open marketing they are seeding more acres of wheat. The same Beware arguments were floated about the AWB in Australia. Nobody in Australia wants the Stalinista’s back. They have way more options and guess what, Alberta framers will no longer be going to jail for selling their own property, I think we will see a boom in Ag spinoffs here in the west as a result of getting rid of the Stalinistas. Now a Durum farmer will not have to sell to the CWB, haul it to the elevators, have it graded etc pay handling fees, storage trucking and then haul it back to his own farm to make pasta products…I think we will see a big boost to secondary producers now.. Beware of Beware…

  29. I left out the Durum farmer would have to buy back his own Durum from the CWB and then haul it home to make pasta etc…

  30. As I posted weeks earlier, Britain now has lots of food.
    The raison d’etre for the WB is gone. And so should the bureaucracy created for it.
    It’s well past it’s “best before date”, in other words.

  31. RFB: Australia is a good example. Corporate farms are winning. Small family farms are losing. But that shouldn’t matter. Every market has winners and losers. Just stop ignoring the reality that our economic winners are already pulverizing our social and cultural friends and this will help them. Turn a blind eye to them and they will turn a blind eye to you.

  32. The wheat growers in Ontario don’t need the CWB because they are small farmers, but we need the CWB in the west or the small farmers will go bankrupt…
    Or something like that….

  33. Beware, should we expand the CWB concept?
    Should there be a Canadian Carpenters Board?
    How about a CDCB, a Canadian Dog Catchers Board?
    You know, to protect the small dog catchers and carpenters, and help them market their wares?

  34. Stan: Don’t be a turd. Learn to read. I am not saying to stop the dismantling of the CWB. I am saying be aware that it has consequences, not all good for all people. We’re not building a socialist utopia here. A free market doesn’t create all winners.
    How this gets handled is important. Ignoring the fact that honest, hard working family farms will suffer from Harper’s decision, is stupid politics, stupid economics, stupid. I’m not saying don’t get rid of the CWB. But there are a thousand ways that can be done.

  35. So what you are saying is that a free market is good for those who have good farming practices and make good marketing choices and bad for those who need subsidation?? Explain how this is a losing situation. I’m all for the small honest farmer that is adept at creating wealth and not for welfare farmers that need help to live day to day.
    That is the same concept as making work in low employment parts of Canada in order to keep people there when we should be helping them to relocate to provinces where there are shortages of employees where they could be helping to drive the economic engine of the country and earn themselves a very decent living. Paying to keep people down and out seems to be a national pasttime – one that I hope goes the way of the dodo.

  36. Beware, please help me connect the dots. I don’t quite see in what you are saying how the free market makes small farmers more susceptible to being taken over by the corporate farms. Everything you have said will happen has already happened with the wheat board in existence so how does the free market make these things occur even more so?

  37. Petra: You live under false assumptions that work in the classroom but not in real life.
    You can work hard, honestly, efficiently and still get squashed by the bigger fish.
    Those bigger fish are getting big subsidies too from Harper and provincial governments.
    Economically and from a freedom point of view, this is right. It just doesn’t mean it has a positive result for all. Don’t know why that is so very hard to comprehend or even in any way controversial. Ah, but you did bring up the dodo.

  38. Beware, you are a fool, or you are being disingenuous. Small family farms here on the Prairies have been dwindling away for generations. There’s simply not enough margin of profit available from a small landholding to support a farm family in the style that we now enjoy. Input costs have gone up, commodity prices have gone down, and the CWB has only managed to exacerbate the situation.
    The only way to make it in grain farming is to go very big; farm a vast number of owned or rented acres. That means the number of active farmers has to go down. The most ambitious, the most motivated, and the best capitalized come out on top as “big farmers”, and the rest fall by the wayside. The number of abandoned homesteads on the Prairie tells the tale.
    If anything, removing the wheat board’s monopsony powers will act to slow down this trend for a while, by giving smaller farmers an opportunity to maximize their income.

  39. spike 1 @ 11:44, exactly.
    Today, in 2011, in the rural municipal division I live, there are 4 or 5 farmers, all at least 60 years of age, that are making a living from farming with the aid of some off farm income.
    I retired early five years ago at age 64 because of a cracked vertebrae acquired from stupidly jumping off of a seeder or combine. Some advice to you older farmers still farming, older people should not jump off of machines.
    In 1974 when we started full time farming there were approximately 22 farmers making their living from farming with no supplementary income. By 1979 there were 4 or 5 farmers that were, or their spouse was, earning some off farm income. Later the number earning off farm income increased until it was about half of them.
    All this occurred under the CWB’s watch. Although the CWB is not the sole culprit, its’ practices contributed to the declining numbers. Wheat was rarely a money maker, but because of the prairie climate is a staple rotation crop. The main cause of the reduction in the numbers of farmers was the constantly escalating inputs and machinery costs while the grain prices stayed largely stagnant for decades until about four years ago. The increase in the taxes over 40 years was also significant. The only way farmers could stay afloat was to increase their acreage.

  40. Beware, since we already market amost all other crops without the CWB, and Ontario farmers don’t use the CWB, I don’t see it as being overly difficult to transition away from the CWB.

  41. Rich fisher:
    the end of the CWB and the registry will be passed in parliament when the house sits later this fall. The paperwork is already done – the Board’s monopsony will end aug 31 2011.
    Beware:
    the open market = higher commodity prices = higher land prices. Thus any producers/landowners who wish to exit will get a greater capital return. Those who wish to continue will be more profitable. This is excellent news for all producers regrdless of their size.
    That small biz gets consolidated into larger biz is a trend until it collapses – look at the telecom industry, airlines, oilcos, etc etc. The demise of the wheat board offers huge opportunities for contract growing to supply a buyer’s particular needs – such needs may be very specific and relative small/high value.
    These markets could be too small for the biggies to mess with, but in time they could become huge. An example is the personal computer – first ignored by the IBMs of the world, then ultimately destroying the mainframe giants.

  43. Great news and a great move. But I wonder, will this sentiment apply to dairy and chicken farmers under the supply-management scheme all parties have said they are going to defend? I guess freedom for some not others.
    Is the CWB still going to receive tons of subsidies?

  44. Beware, You are the one that said the big operators would squeeze out the small in a fully competitive environment. I simply pointed out a number of small businesses that became big businesses and were not squeezed out. I then pointed out a number of big businesses that were squeezed out. I then indicated that business success was not determined by size. In fact, I would submit that size is a very small determinant of success. I believe success has to do with the execution of a well developed and flexible business plan. I pointed out those businesses that receive support from government in pursuit of fairness would otherwise fail. All of my arguments were supported with real life examples to support those arguments not some theoretical enterprise.

  45. So why doesn’t Ritz’s views on the Wheat Board apply to supply managment? Quebec controlled, of course.
    He’s a politician with no priciples favouring open markets at all.

  46. “No expensive survey can trump the individual right of farmers to market their own grain.”
    How about the “individual right” to be employed in your field of choice without the requirement of a union membership?

  47. In my opinion if farmers grow it, they should be able to sell it. On their own terms. If they want to be part of a co-op, than band together. What really worries me is the shrinking of farm families, with the growth of Industrial farming.
    Individual farming has proved itself for thousands of years. The other kind has always ended in faliuar. Just look at Roamn mass slave farming. Its one of the reasons the Roman Republic died.

  48. “No expensive survey can trump the individual right of farmers to market their own grain.”
    And…
    their own milk…
    and…
    their own eggs…
    and…
    their own chickens!
    Yay! Go get ’em Gerry!
    Sure…

  49. The CWB is peddling the same line that one always hears on those rare occasions when a hugely harmful government program is facing cuts/elimination: the people we ” serve ” will face the abyss alone, to face who knows what dark horrors, if we go. The CWB has distributed this survey to bolster that line. By now, everyone knows the claim that vast bureaucratic government is necessary for the protection of the weak and friendless they ” serve ” is totally phony, and that the only thing they are protecting is their worthless bureaucracy. The CWB will be remembered for only one thing, the infringement of citizen’s liberty. What a disgrace!
    Ritz had the perfect comment, which was much more refined then the fraud Olberg deserved.

  50. Beware, since we already market amost all other crops without the CWB, and Ontario farmers don’t use the CWB, I don’t see it as being overly difficult to transition away from the CWB.

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