Global Warming

[grassfarmer]

Parsley could you please explain the following comments to me I don't understand them.
"...all the negatives spell "Don't pick farming."

So grassfarmer types end up with the multinationals he hates, owning all and .......yup....farming

Ironic, isn't it?

[parsley]

Poor farm-dollars are not attracting the next generation to farm, and they have lots of alternate choices that pay well. They leave.

Wheat and barley have been miserably low-priced, (but are necessary in rotations), yet grassfarmer types have advocated 'more of the same'.

"Keep doing the same," say the grassers

"Keep the CWB," say the grassers.

"Keep on working just the same as for the last 60 years," say the grassers

Kids don't wanna. Or didja notice?

A lot of family farms kaputsa.



The grassers will be pleased. As long as it keeps the CWB intact, nothing must change.


Parsley

[charliep]

Interesting conversation between two people who don't follow the main stream in typical commodity production and take responsibility on marketing but yet face totally different systems with regards to bureaucracy/government involvement.

Also note again the CWB survey and results - grain farmers want competition with the CWB in the services provided. I not the cattle industry complains about major 2 packers and their influence but they also have the ability to sell cattle south and sell to smaller packers as well as market their own product with minimal interference. They can also buy input (feed) unrestricted from the US. I note the hoops a grain farmer has to go through to do exactly the same thing the cattleperson considers a right and they do it through a monopoly with no right of objection.

[parsley]

jensend and willagro,

Could we agree on these three points?

1. The CWB has lost considerable farmer-support.

2. The CWB NEEDS farmers to support it and go to bat for them.

3. The CWB must make some changes. If they do not, the CWB will no longer be.

Parsley

[jensend]

sure, i'll agree. now will you agree that the cwb is not the source of concentration of ownership in the grain handling and crop input sectors of grain farming and will you not agree that whether the cwb exists or not those same corps will determine the amount of risk grain farmers will be exposed to and the average margin in grainfarming? several years ago we got a new banker who had just quit, i think, aventis. when he told me that was his former employer i said then he would know the cost of production of a bushel of wheat better than ninety per cent of farmers. he just smiled and said that was their business and how they set their prices. we exited grain farming a few years later because it was becoming more and more evident that the farmer was the biggest risk taker in the value chain.

[grassfarmer]

Charlie and parsley, you folks think you are so far in front you don't realise how far behind you really are. Citing the great options the cattle farmer has to market his cattle in the "free market" is a joke. No Parsley I'm not doing the same as sixty years ago, I was still 20 years off being born then. I've moved continents, moved species (dropped sheep), changed breeds, produced a new product (grassfed beef) using new methods and marketed it in a new way (direct) so don't tell me I'm looking for the same old ,same old. If anything is the same old its this anti cwb bitching...on and on it goes.
And Charlie for all the great options you say I have not one of them would bid on my grass-fed cattle so I have had to establish my own production, processing and sale model.
Reality is the cattle production model based on the free market approach is broken because there is no free market here, we have a rigged monopoly market instead. Even your boss recognises that Charlie, with his landmark Government intervention proposed in the new livestock policy. Cattle producers are broke due to a rigged monopoly market while grain farmers have the prospect of the highest grain prices in their lives with the cwb still in place. So you are working flat out to rid the cwb and put yourselves in the same boat cattle producers have been in.... real smart...NOT! Maybe 10,15 or 20 years from now you will realise the mistake you made and come crawling back to Government looking for protection. Just like the dairy producers in the UK that thought deregulation and the free market offered them better prospects. It takes a while to relearn what your grand fathers new.

[jensend]

well said.

[FarmRanger]

Just curious grassfarmer, what protection do you think the CWB offers western grain farmers? Grain farmers around the world are getting good prices right now, but that has little to do with the efforts of the CWB.

Do you think you’d be better off with a single entity like the CWB to buy all, and only Prairie province cattle?

As for the topic of the thread, with 1998 being the hottest of the last 10 years, it's becoming increasingly obvious that the claims of catastrophic global temperature increases caused by rising atmospheric C02 are dubious. There are clearly more powerful forces affecting global temperatures than just CO2.

[furrowtickler]

At the end of the day we all grow food for human consuption, meat prices are set to rise considerbly and grain prices are not comming down. Deal with it, on every side. Those who do will be well off as any exec in the western world. Grassfarmer - there are alot of options beyond barley, feed wheat, and corn to feed animals - take the blinders off! The line from shreik ? still sticks in my mind - Change is good donkey! Global warming is such B.S., Tim Ball nailed it years ago, relax have a drink everyone!

[jensend]

there's always one issue that very few want to address- markets are broken. there is little or no competition. what is canola basis now compared to two years ago? if there was competition would it have increased so much? did the cost of phosphate production quadruple in the last year and a half? if there was competition in these sectors (as there is in farming) prices would approach cost. simple economics 101. it's so much easier to focus on the shortcomings of the cwb (and they definitely have some that should be addressed) than to look at the structure of food production and marketing systems and say how do i deal with this? does the cwb protect you - no. is it your biggest problem -no. if the cwb disappeared and if (big if) your revenues went up your costs would instantly increase because they can do it. the inputs and handling sectors are the perfect parasite; bleed the host within an inch of death but don't kill it. you see the same behavior through the whole economy whether it's financial services, petroleum, whatever. less competition means less innovation and efficiency.