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High HRS and Durum prices a Myth in Western Canada!
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One organic farmer got ticked at the CWB and this was published:
CWB Policy Penalizes West and Favors East
My name is Kirk Torkelson and I farm with my wife, Ila at Beaubier, Saskatchewan. Our 1500 acre mixed-farm is certified organic, and we run a 60 cow herd. We also have off farm jobs. Our four children are grown up and are off the farm with good careers . It has been a struggle the past ten years on our farm. Governments have been telling farmers to diversify and we have responded, from farming methods to increasing cattle herd and now to organic farming. It's time for the Canadian Wheat Board to diversify too, and stop being the bully in the system and start supporting the Western Canadian farmer.
In Nov/ 2002 I found a market for my organic HRS wheat through a company in Alberta for export to the USA. This company informed me I had to go to the CWB and buy the wheat. Previously, I sold wheat to other companies, but they handled the buy-back themselves. I was a rookie at buy-backs for organic grain and I trusted the CWB to handle the procedures, so I sold and then bought back, (a PDS), my wheat from the CWB.
The total amount of wheat in the PDS was 76 tonnes and I paid $1430 upfront to the CWB when the sale was made. For my own wheat. All the amounts were based on CWB's actual figures: the CWB PRO ($296.90/mt); the CWB estimated final spread ($314.67 - $296.90 $2.00 admin fee) and the CWB’s own estimated interim and final payments ($118.10/mt ). It was understood that the payments to come would cover the buy-back costs and that the $1430 payment was to cover the final spread. The CWB determined all the estimates; I was unable to do any negotiating in any way.
Thirteen months later, because of CWB incompetence, I received a bill from them for $4630. The total cost for the PDS/buy-back/export license now becomes $6060 out of my pocket. An Eastern organic grower making the exact sale puts an extra $6060 into his own pocket. I was in shock because the CWB is asking for approx. 30% of the gross income from my grain sale and all they did was issue me an export license. I marketed the wheat myself, and because the CWB cannot sell into my special market, I am not taking sales away from them. I do not want them to begin marketing organics either.
The CWB is being unfair to Western Canadian farmers because if I were an Ontario organic farmer, although I would still need a CWB export license, the CWB would just issue me one without having to do a buyback. Neither would I pay a $2.00/tonne administration fee. I would bypass Board pooling the same as the big feed mills and seedgrowers across Canada do. Discrimination against western farmers by the CWB must stop.
I want the Directors of the CWB to be decent enough to instruct the CWB's Licensing Department to issue no-buyback licenses to Western organic farmers in order to provide me with the same privileges as the Eastern Canadian farmers enjoy. With these outrageous costs to ONLY Western organic farmers, we cannot have a level playing field and we cannot compete with the Eastern organic farmers who have access to a no buy-back license. As well, only Western farmers also get stuck paying the total bill of the Wheat Board's national licensing costs.
Organic farmers applying for export licenses who want to bypass CWB pooling can be easily accommodated simply by granting them no-buyback licences. Organic farmers eager to remain in the conventional CWB pools can continue to go through the buyback in order to remain in the pools. The CWB already allows conventional farmers the option to market their grain outside the pooling accounts through programs like the fixed price and basis contracts.
I am asking the CWB Directors to tell the CWB licensing department to grant no buy-back licenses to those certified organic producers who request one. If the CWB is prepared to help producers, this could be done right away, without changing legislation, and without cost. If not, I can no longer trust the CWB and no longer want to do business with them
Well, if there is anything the CWB, and especially little Kenny Ritter dreads, it is being dragged through the National Post mud
Quote
Inorganic wheat board
By avoiding the Canadian Wheat Board and selling their own organic
wheat, Western grain farmers could earn more, while taxpayers saved millions
Carol Husband
Financial Post
Thursday, March 04, 2004
Kirk and Ila Torkelson farm organically at Beaubier, Saskatchewan, and like all businesses, it's challenging.
In Nov. 2002, two truckloads of
Torkelson's wheat headed south for the American organic market. He needed the sale. If Torkelson lived in Ontario, he would have been granted the required Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) export license, but CWB policy denies licences to Western farmers.
CWB policymakers use their licensing division to funnel grain into the CWB's Marketing Division, where it is pooled.
For Torkelson to legally cross customs, he needed to sell both loads of his wheat to the CWB and then, be damned, buy back the same two loads of
his own wheat from the CWB, coughing up a tidy $1,430 payout to it in
the process.
The CWB legislation, itself, doesn't specify this buyback requirement
for getting a permit, but the CWB bureaucrats do.
By having to sell his grain to the CWB, Torkelson was automatically plunked into the conventional CWB system, one which eats up Western organic farmers' profits, gives them a price based on a formula meaningless to organic farmers, and prevents them from competing with their Eastern
counterparts on a level playing field.
Out West, organic farmers want to be added to the CWB's privileged licensing list, which includes Eastern growers, kamut wheat growers, big
corporate feed mills, seed growers and others.
Each is automatically granted export licences, each bypasses CWB marketing and pooling, each downloads its licensing costs on the West and each puts the cash in its own pocket.
Adding organics to the privileged list is logical because the CWB can't even market organic grain since global organic markets require the CWB seller to be certified organic, which it is not.
The CWB was so confident in its selling ability during the 2002 bullish grain market that it actually predicted, in writing, that the CWB's
payment system should get Torkelson what amounted to a preliminary
$8,900 payment at the end of the crop year.
The CWB's communication's machine -- a $2-million farmer-funded operation -- was in full gear in every media outlet and farmers were inundated with the likes of CWB analyst Peter Watt, boasting, "... the wheat board is in the driver's seat in terms of where we market the grain, when we market the grain and what price level we market the grain."
Prices were high and grain seemed scarce as CWB elections appeared on a
sunny horizon. But the CWB pulled out of the hot market.
It should have spent more time
marketing and less time going to Liberal fundraisers with tickets paid for by farmers, because the market dived and the board ended up selling into a falling market and swallowing a huge deficit, but not before it took a bite out of Torkelson.
Thirteen months after his buyback, Torkelson received a second dun, or
demand for money, from the CWB for $4,630, increasing his buyback cost
to $6,060, or 30% of the gross income from his sale, with the only service being rendered was to issue an export licence.
When his plight became public, the CWB claimed it was Torkelson's own
fault.
The CWB's organic marketing specialist (who doesn't market organic grain nor do organic farmers want him to), went after Torkelson in the Western Producer newspaper saying: "It appears that he wasn't following the pool return outlook and he wasn't keeping abreast of what the market was doing. If he had done that, he would have been more aware."
There was absolutely nothing Torkelson could have done. He had done
business according to the CWB's terms.
The CWB's actions highlight the pitfalls of dealing with this government agency.
First, you can't trust the CWB's figures and projections to determine whether the buyback is affordable -- the second dun proved just how bogus the CWB's own figures can be.
Second, although CWB experts stopped selling during a bullish market and although CWB profits turned so sour that the CWB ended up begging the federal government for $85-million of taxpayer's money, Torkelson -- the managing expert on his farm -- knew enough to sell into his niche organic market when prices were high;
third, it reflects the CWB's attempt to download the blame for their lacklustre selling on to the backs of farmers who are critical.
Torkelson wasn't alone in suffering at the CWB's hands. Organic producer
Cyril Stott of Brandon, for example, calculated that he lost $13,500
from his 2002 crop in the bottomless-buyback-hole. These kinds of losses
happen all the time in organics, but you don't hear about them.
No less important, but often overlooked, are the organic sales that are actually lost. Dwayne McGregor farms in Chaplan, Sask., and he blames
the CWB's high buyback as a contributing factor behind his lost sale to Japan. Arnold Schmidt near Maple Creek lost his sale to the U.S. because of the CWB.
Even though organic buybacks are gouging profits, strangling Prairie
sales and stopping contracting, the CWB continues to withhold licences.
Eastern Canadians and other countries then seize the Western farmers'
lost economic opportunities.
Most CWB directors refuse to acknowledge the disadvantage that Western organics face. The truth is clear to others, including the Western
Barley Growers, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Standing Committee
of Agriculture and Agri-food, Agri-core United and the Grain Growers of
Canada.
All have adopted policies supporting marketing choice for farmers. The Alberta government is also firm in its stance for equal marketing choice opportunities.
Economic hurt is embodied in Western
alienation, and until each Westerner has the same economic opportunities
that Easterners enjoy, resentment will grow.
Is there a solution? Yes. Organic farmers have provided the CWB with an
instant, no-cost solution. The CWB could simply grant export licences to
Western organic farmers, the same as it already does for Eastern farmers
and others. No changes in the legislation are required.
If the cwb is the shining example of how to run agriculture, I guess you would be happy to send me a cheque for my portion of your lentil or chickpea crop this year right?
Don't forget one for every other farmer out there.
If I were to give Gerry or more precicely the Harper Gov't, a grade on CWB reform, it would be 60% because they're only doing barley. And because they're a year and a half late they are further deducted another 50%. So my final grade for ol' Gerry is 10%.
Unless the Bill is titled;
An Act to REPEAL the CWB Act.
It's really not going to mean much.
Barley is so anti-climactic. Barley is already dead as far as an industry is concerned, new malt investments are going to be decide upon within the next six months and there is zero chance of this bill becoming law within that time frame and the feed market is slideing into oblivion faster than you can say "total collapse of the cattle and hog industry".
Barley is deader than Julius Caesar.
Wheat is where the play is, wheat is where the feds can still make a difference, but do you think they are smart enough or forward thinking enough to see that reality today?
Not a hope.
But where are the farm groups demanding action on wheat????
Crickets! that's all I hear. The odd lonely tumbleweed rolling across the wind swept prairie. Other than that, Nothing.
why are we all accepting of just barley being done only ????
Because Gerry said so ????
Pathetic.
The farm Groups should be hanging their heads in shame for just going along to get along.
I didn't go to Gerry's little show because it seemed to me so irrelevant to what is reality that I just couldn't be there. I had other personal commitments that took far greater precedence and even if I hadn't had prior commitments I don't think I could have gone and clapped my hands and waved a sign in support of what will probably amount to NOTHING changing.
We're ready to invade Normandy,
And Ritz is still trying to figure out whether Hitler is is nice guy or not!
Stubble when the Chick pea lottery was held years ago I wasn't piss-d that you guys made money Hell I was happy for you. Good finally a crop for Southern Areas.
Organic got their exempt licensing system. No change to the CWB Act. NO NEED to change the CWB Act. Wheat is no different. The Western Grain Marketing Panel Report indicated the same. AND TOLD the CWB to start issuing the export licenses.
Ritz and Anderson are RIGHT.
Have you watched QUESTION Period?
THese guys got hung for killing Deanna... and they had nothing to do with that decision.
RITZ is RIGHT.
DION, GOODALE, TALIBAN JACK, And the Easterfried Bunny need to be left danging out in the political wind... for the totally stupid and insane policy they are forcing 'designated area' grain growers to live by.
Anderson and Ritz... the big guy himself...cannot tell these guys what to do.
But we can.
1000 letters/e-mails/faxes a day to each one of these misguided politico's... would make a huge difference.
There should be billboards with their faces on them... RED COMMIE faces... but you guys are going to let them off scott free?
WHAT IS THIS?
WE ARE THE dummies who elected the likes of Ritter, Flaman... And McDreary! Manitoba is even worse!
We have to be the worst communicators...at getting the realistic and positive story out...that we have to tell!
CWB staff cave like butter on a windowsill in summer.
STRESS LEAVE, Where art thou?
Parsley
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