Remember Two-Priced Wheat?

[sumdumguy]

A higher price in Canada, sounds good to me.

[fjlip]

Are you in a 40 year time warp? Or just over indulging in too much "don't give a sh*T juice"?

[farmaholic]

I heard about it but can't say I remember or experienced it.

No elixirs being consumed either....

[Ache4Acres]

sum dum...what is it? And from when?

[farmaholic]

Higher domestic price than export price...

[sawfly]

i must be pretty old,
2 priced wheat . domestic users were charged more . than export position prices.
was a way to put more money in farmers pockets.

just like when we pay more for fert. that is produced here than the world price.

the powers that be decided it was not fair to Cdn bakers to pay a higher price.
and it was eliminated.
of course the western cdn wheat growers wanted it gone. and it was going to create this big baking industry here. ( i don't know where they are hiding these bakeries )

But when it comes to fertilizer and chemical , the same powers think it is just fine that we pay way more than world price.

just tells you who the govt. really works for.
i would have been fine without 2 priced wheat if they had applied the same theory to what we buy too.

[Hopalong]

Better in theory than in practice.
Do not have good memories.

[riders2010]

There is the price and grade you get at the elevator and then the price and blended grade they sell it for.

[sumdumguy]

As I remember it, and I was pretty young then, wheat sold in Canada to Canadian flour mills for say, 7 bucks when export price was $2.75. It raised the price of a bag of flour in Canada by a buck or so, no big deal, but farmers realized a good price for a portion of their production.

I didn't think you young whipper snappers would have a sniff about two-priced wheat. Think it was a program during Otto Lang's time. We had a few innovative politicians back then who were genuinely concerned about farmer's fair returns, even if they only could control the domestic price.

[FarmRanger]

sumdumguy, the problem with the practice you described of gouging your local buyer is that they became less competitive with absolutely no ability to expand into other markets.
Stifling the domestic use of wheat is why we have no large millers/bakers/pasta companies in Canada that could have now sourced vast amounts of Canadian wheat for export of value added product. Short sighted and economically disastrous in the long run.

Agriculture isn't the only place we've had counterproductive protectionist policies screwing up our industries. Interprovincial trade barriers have not allowed Canadian companies to get big enough domestically to compete properly globally. I look at the current political landscape and fear that we will continue down this road indefinitely with governments picking a few favorites to subsidize into global competitiveness (eg. Bombarier) rather than let the marktplace do it much more efficiently and fairly.
Always remember that subsidies have to be paid out of the taxes from Canada's other industries and their employees, which in turn reduces their profitablility and competitiveness.
There's no free lunch and I fear that Canadians will never learn that governments have never created any lunch. They only have the power to steal part of your lunch to give to someone they like better than you, reducing your ability to create more lunches in the future. Continuing the analogy: The very government that should be creating and enforcing the rules to keep bullies from stealing our lunch, have become the bullies themselves.