U.S. Wheat still not price competitive

[TOM4CWB]

Dear Lee,

Clearly... if you attended (which I remember seeing you I am sure) a certain outlook last fall in Calgary... Jerry Gulke and I sat together... and talked through at great length the 'record' of this certain group.

They are simply awful at wheat... and last fall was the perfect example of why.

Do you remember what they forecast for prices winter 07-08?

Do you know how much that forecast 07-08 cost many wheat growers?

Does the CWB justify its market performance on the records of such co's?

I just have a real problem with predicting the future... in this environment... with this kind of volatility.

US Wheat associates has been one of the least biased... best info sources... I have tracked... next to Jerry Gulke that is!

Some of the best things in life... can be 'free' if we know how to appreciate them... and listen closely... counting the chickens... before they are hatched... has ALWAYS been a bad Idea... and reaping what we sow... is a principal that can't be disputed!

GRIN [ :

[TOM4CWB]

Dear Lee...

Here is a good article... that simply points out the obvious... to any sane person with an ounce of common sense... and I will ask a simple question AFTER you read it... please!

Just GRIN ... Bear it... and READ it Lee!

4. CWB Counterpoint
by Alan Tracy, USW President

The chairman and CEO of the Canadian Wheat Board are in Geneva this week, using free trade rhetoric but harboring a protectionist agenda. Their goal is to protect their precious western Canadian wheat export monopoly from proposed WTO rules that could ban such monopolies. The U.S. and the EU are leading the charge for change, and the CWB is urging negotiators to soften the language into a number of as yet undefined "disciplines" that probably will be impossible to enforce.

We believe that western Canadian wheat producers deserve the opportunity to sell their wheat to whomever they choose and that they will benefit from real competition for their wheat and barley crops as they do now in canola, sunflowers, beef, flax and just about everything else they raise. As the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association recently pointed out, western wheat and barley are the only Canadian commodities aside from plutonium that cannot legally be sold to the highest bidder. Despite ample evidence that most growers want to choose where to sell their wheat, the CWB has fought them at every turn. The growers have no choice but to deliver their milling wheat to the CWB monopoly. Consistently, the CWB's captive growers earn less per bushel than their neighbors south of the border are able to achieve from the open U.S. marketplace.

The CWB executives are buttonholing everyone they can in Geneva to say that the CWB's pricing policies are not trade distorting. But it is just spin. The primary difference between the CWB monopoly and an open market is their tight control of the supply, which allows them to set their prices administratively, and often differently, from market to market. Any time a price is set by fiat rather than a competitive marketplace it is bound to move trade in ways that would not occur in an open market. That is the very definition of trade distortion. The CWB monopoly has price manipulation and trade distortion as the primary goals of their operation. To repeatedly claim that they do not distort trade is absolutely disingenuous. Rolf Penner, a Manitoba wheat grower and Vice President of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, recently said it best: "To suggest the CWB is not trade-distorting is patently absurd. For the CWB's statement to be true, it would mean that trade flows would be identical if the CWB did not exist. Surely no one, except the CWB, is willing to make that claim with a straight face."

Along with many of their farming brethren in Australia, who just this month were freed from the shackles of their own wheat monopoly, U.S. wheat producers hope that the WTO can help our northern cousins gain the marketing freedom that the CWB has thus far denied them."

http://www.uswheat.org/wheatLetter/doc/3B70AD5BCE37115585257490006F1FF0?OpenDocument#

Now... DEAAR Lee... who exactly is it that is "Still not price competitive'!?

GRIN { :

Accurate information...
In the mind of a fool...
Means far less...
Than the thoughts...
Of a humbled person...
With a good memory!

You can quote me Lee!

You still haven't shared... yet... how that old Ford car is working for you!

GRIN { ;

[melvill]

Tom, you cajoled me into reading the last long post. Grin. I have to confess that I have a hard time believing that the US Wheat Associates is an unbiased organization. Their job is to promote US wheat. I guess I'd feel more comfortable about them if I knew that they hadn't supported the U.S. tariff on Cdn wheat a few years back.

No the old Merc isn't home yet. Can't drive it home without an Alberta safety inspection and can't haul it home. Apparently my pickup won't trailer that much weight. Suppose your diesel jeep would trailer 5600 pounds including trailer?

[melvill]

I got distracted from the original intent of this thread. The Memphis company was saying that U.S. wheat was to highly priced for many tenders. The company wasn't forecasting prices for down the road.

Further, I noticed that another company was saying that U.S. spot basis levels were unusually weak which further suggests that US futures prices are an 'island unto themselves' interms of world wheat prices.