help the farmers that grow durum

[nfunk]

Eat more pasta it is good for you! Go out and buy some pasta and try to eat it more
often. When you go out for dinner order pasta. Just say "pass the pasta"!
Pasta provides a good portion of your daily requirements for iron, magnesium,
phosphorous, niacin and folate, and is very low in fat. When you choose to eat more
pasta, you will be helping the farmers that grow durum to produce the pasta. When you
get this email read it and forward it on to as many people as you can. You
can even print off a few copies and give it to people you know that do not have email. I
have some statistics about pasta and durum below, please feel free to
read this information. Once you have read this email and forwarded it on please go to the
bottom of this paragraph and click on my web site; I have a counter
there. I am trying to get a rough idea on how many people are receiving this email.

My web site
http://plaza.powersurfr.com/jagtrucking/


I am a farmer and we grow Durum on our farm in South Western Saskatchewan, Canada.
Over the last few years the cost for growing Durum has increased
substantially, while the amount we get paid per bushel has only slightly increased. This
translates into the cost of growing it being almost the same as we get paid
for selling it. Pasta is made from Durum wheat that is milled into semolina flour. A bushel
of durum wheat (60 pounds) makes enough semolina to produce 42
pounds of pasta, approximately 210 servings. A farmer that grows durum gets around
$5.64 per bushel for their Durum. After it is processed into pasta it is worth
about $42 per bushel. A pound of pasta costs about $1 to buy. One bushel of durum can
make about 42 pounds of pasta. If you would eat 1 serving of pasta 3
times a week it would take 70 weeks to eat all the pasta made from 1 bushel of durum.

There is approximately 1,356,000,000 bushels of durum in the world at this time. Not all
of the Durum will be of good enough quality to produce pasta. If 75% of
the Durum can be used, that would produce 42,714,000,000 pounds of pasta. The world
population is approximately 6,195,000,000. If only 60% of the world
population eats pasta and if all those people ate 11 pounds of pasta every six months, that
would use up the world supply of Durum. This would keep the
demand up with the supply. When the demand goes up, the price goes up for the farmers.
At the present time it is estimated that the price for #1 durum 12.5%
protein will be $6.94 per bushel. Of that amount the South Western Saskatchewan
farmer only receives $5.64 per bushel because we the farmers have to pay to
ship a product that we produce. The transportation and handling costs are as follows: 92
cents rail freight, 10 cents cleaning, 27 cents handling, and 1 cent
inspection and handling. These prices are not affected by the price of Durum. The price
of pasta would only have to increase 12 cents a pound for the farmer to
receive $5 more per bushel. This would help the farmers to meet their costs and be able to
earn a living without having to subsidize their farming business with
other work off the farm, leaving more jobs for other citizens that do not farm.

Thank you

Jason Gizen

Here is a web site with some statistics about pasta.
http://www.ilovepasta.org/industrystatistics.html

You can go to this web site to get nutritional information about pasta.
http://www.ilovepasta.org/nutrition.html

The population statistics were taken from this web site, you can go here to see the
population counter that is updated daily.
http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/popclockw

[charliep]

I agree with your thoughts. Durum is a tremendous crop in the southern prairies. The three biggest issues for durum are:

1) It is a very well defined market in most areas of the world it that you can name the customers, their quality requirements and the amount they will buy. The exception is N. Africa where the amount sold depends on the size of their crop - couscous is a food staple so they do have to enter the world market if their own crop is short but that doesn't happen every year.

2) You can blend other types of wheat in the lower quality end of pasta. The protein needs for the higher end of the pasta market are at least 12 % with 13 % a minimum in many cases.

3) Canada represents 75 % plus of world durum trade. What we grow has a big impact on international durum prices.

I agree that durum is a crop that we need to develop new markets. Increasing pasta consumption is one alternative. I know the Grain Research Lab has been looking at durum in more alternative flour types. Couscous is another market that can be expanded over time. We need to introduce durum to more countries plus make sure we are competing with pasta products in terms of quality.

[TOM4CWB]

Charlie,

I think it is a crime that the CWB is encouraging prairie durum growers to invest in the North Dakota pasta plant.

It must be obvious that the western prairies grow the best durum in the world, why can we not manufacture pasta here?

Why would we ship our grain to Italy-EU countries to have them process it and then ship it back to the rest of the world?

Can we not strike a strategic alliance with the market power we have in the prairies to make sure we actually end up with local jobs from growing this special product?

Isn't this the type of thing the CWB was "supposed" to do to help western Canadian grain producers prosper?

Why instead now is the CWB encouraging the export of both our financial capital and our grain to the USA (Prarie Pasta)???

What is the CWB becoming?

[Steve]

Is it easier to export pasta or durum wheat and is the transportation cost the same? Is the pasta market not competitive?

[cowman]

It only makes economic sense that the pasta plant should have been in Canada and not in the U.S. It is a complete disgrace that a Canadian GOVERNMENT agency ruined this opportunity for not only growers but a lot of other people as well. How many jobs could have been created if this plant was here? Time for beurocratic self interest groups like the CWB to go! This has to be one of the srongest arguments for the end of the CWB!

[charliep]

Steve

You have asked the billion dollar question that gets debated all the time at work. Locate close to supply or near consumption. Moving semolina is more expensive than durum but it is a higher valued product so you can afford to pay it. Transporting packaged pasta products is even more expensive but the value of the product goes up even more.

Consistent supplies of high quality competitively priced durum and costs of manufacturing in different regions (labor, energy, taxes, government incentives/interference, etc) will the key factors determining where new plants get located.

An objective here in Alberta is to attract more of these types of investments.

What are other thoughts?

[TOM4CWB]

Charlie,

With over 1.5mmt of high quality durum going to the EU, US and Japan, not even counting Canadian consumption, it is obvious that a natural advantage should accrue to processing somewhere in western Canada!

The pasta plant shut down in Lethbridge is characteristic of Multi-national concentration of the processing sectors in agriculture.

Clearly we can buy Italian pasta in the grocery store, which obviously came from Canada to begin with(if the amount we ship to the EU says anything at all)!!!

Strategic alliances obviously would be necessary to become effective marketers in this market for pasta.

I believe almost without exception Canadian durum growers would support this type of value added industry in western Canada.

Why is the CWB asking us to support dumping the highest quality durum into North Dakota at less than world value (recent conversations with durum growers being contacted by PPP reveal), which I understand this Prairie Pasta share investment requests?

In this North Dakota case we loose our economic value-added opportunity, is it any wonder these shares have gone over like a lead ballon?

Why does the CWB just not get what we are trying to do out here, save rural communities and stop the depopulation of rural western Canada?

[charliep]

Just a note. It was a pasta producing and packaging company was the company that shut down in Lethbridge. Ellison Mills still produces semilina, the flour used in pasta.

[charliep]

Why didn't the Praire Pasta Producers move to complete a plant in Canada? There was no regulation preventing them from establishing a plant here. They would have been priced according to location, in the same fashion as every other mill in Canada - on a competitive footing with their US counterparts.

In fact, there has been a significant rate of increase in milling capacity in western Canada. In percentage terms, western Canada has been advancing faster than most any other region in North America. Why is it an ok milling environment for expansion at Robin Hood (s'toon), Ellison Mills (Lethbridge), Elie Manitoba, etc. but a total show stopper for Praire Pasta Producers?

So there is a lot of misinformation about the CWB preventing the establishment of a plant. The CWB developed policies specific to assist New Generation Co-ops, which was the model proposed. The company would have been responsible to call the grain from the farmer-members.

And as PPP evaluated its options and wanted to join with the Dakota Growers, the CWB found a way to facilitate that request, by working cooperatively to meet common objectives.

Perhaps the comments that this is one more reason for the CWB to go could be backed up with some comments on why that perception lingers.

Tom

[TOM4CWB]

thalpenny,

Can I get CWB long term export license exemptions from the pooling accounts to export Durum products, if I and other durum producers set up a new generation co-operative durum processing plant within the CWB "designated area"?

[TOM4CWB]

If you are purchasing your durum from the CWB, you can export the processed product.

[TOM4CWB]

thalpenny,

Why if I do not require or request any of your services do you continue to force me to do business with the CWB against my better judgement?

Why must I buy my own wheat back from you when you did not invest, manage, grow, or finance any part of my crop or business?

Logically, if you folks at the CWB enjoy selling wheat and barley, can't you grow your own, and do whatever you would like with it yourselves?

I would have no problem having you sell your own wheat and barley, why won't you let me process and sell my own products?

What Section in the CWB Act or Regulations say I must sell my wheat or barley to you, if you don't have anything to do with financing or providing productive services to complete this sale?

[bob4choice]

Thalpenny,
You stated "They would have been priced according to location, in the same fashion as every other mill in Canada - on a competitive footing with their US counterparts."

When a mill based on the prairies buys grain from the CWB (or does a buyback) it pays roughly the same price as a mill in Ontario. Now how on earth can it compete with Ontario when to sell it's manufactured product in the Eastern US it has to pay the freight twice? (once to the CWB for the freight to Thunder Bay and once for the finished product to market)

You should read "1984 by George Orwell" . You seem to be well on your way to adopting "double-speak".
The author was amazingly prescient when, in his classic book, 1984, he described the future appearance of "double-speak" as a powerful tool for political control.

[TOM4CWB]

bob4choice,

I think you will find the CWB subtracts the freight off the purchase price, when I did buybacks this was the normal case. I understand the CWB backs the freight off Portland for Alberta mills, they track where products go and adjust accordingly!

Actually normally, if the mills hold their heads just the right way, and say the right things, they can do very well buying domestically from the CWB!

But if they don't...?

[wedino]

Tom4, When I did a buy back, the cwb charged me the difference between the initial & their selling price. I stroked a cheque to the grain co. that did the transaction for me. What peeves me about the whole process is the $5.00/MT I paid the grain co. to do this transaction. Why can't I do this transaction with the cwb directly? CWB tells me that I may not pay them, so what, if I don't pay what stops them from holding back my payments?

Another peeve is the time it takes to do the transaction.

& still another is the fact cwb puts a time limit on the export permitt. They make me buy my own grain & then tell me to export it in 2 months or?? I don't know the consequences, put me in jail during winter months, please!