CWB cancels malt barley pool

[kamichel]

You have a point and I have said before that under our current system of holding up the pro we were losing too many sales. On the positive we do have some actions going on.

[furrowtickler]

What happened to all the producers that had malt on hold? This is not realy a surprise, the industry (line companies) have said for well over a month that the malt program was pretty well full and the borg was out of the market for a while. Our barley was on hold, so I am glad we did the P&H deal. Not much different the the fert price crah - do a little of your own homework and ask the right questions to the right people. The thing that is disturbing is that just about all if not all the malt was selected before the barley harvest was even 2/3 done. In an all for one system, this sucks for those who have high quality malt that was harvested later were screwed right from the start.

[TOM4CWB]

furrowtickler;

At the risk of giving pearls to the...

Forced CWB Confiscation of our grain... to have CWB globally capture ill-gotten gain...

Sadly the CWB Fails to explain... the fact that the thefts of our grain, remain.

That my farm cannot obstain... leads me to complain... that the purpose for the CWB pools are all in vain; causing me to write this refrain...

Who do we blame?

I think we are going insane!

[jensend]

well you're right about one thing.

[charliep]

A thought about consistency in application of the cash plus
program.

New export business will provide a farmer price of about $4/bu
based on a customer CIF price of USD $240/tonne. This is based
on USD $25/tonne ocean freight, an 80 cent loonie, $20/tonne
port costs and $60/tonne to move to port (rail, elevation).

Would the CWB still offer/promote the cash plus program if
international malt barley prices were USD $340/tonne and the
contribution the cash plus total returns returns were closer to
$6.75/bu or would they simply use the sales to push the PRO
higher for people that have already delivered the CWB.

Maybe I am missing something but the cash plus has to be a
legitimate 365 day a year program to be effective. Why haven't
farmers heard about this program to date as a business alternative
and out of the light of press releases? Should the CWB operations
side be able to cherry pick sales on the cash plus program to make
the malt barley pool look better?

[charliep]

jensend

Is the maltplus a good program for farmers? A
complaint I hear from the supply chain (not
farmers) is the complexity of the program and lag
times between negotiating a price with a brewer
(domestic or export), finding the price the CWB
wants, finding out the cashplus payment the CWB
will offer farmers and finally getting farmers to sign
up volumes.

On the good side of the ledger (not including
organic programs), the cashplus program is as
close to the CWB offering a price to farmers that
reflects an actual sale to customer. The risk
managment side of this program from a
CWB/pooling perspective (ultimately farmer) is low
cost to operate and relatively inexpensive.

[charliep]

last word should be simple and not inexpensive - already said
that. For those of you who attended the CWB presentation at
Farmtech, you got a taste of how complex (read expensive) the
CWB programs are both in terms of their process of using markets
to obtain an average price during the year and in running the
producer pricing options/contingency fund. Everyone (and I mean
everyone) will have to read this years annual report carefully.

[kamichel]

Another possible problem, do some farmers out there have a cash plus deal with their barley on hold? With the reduced price I doubt the barley will get picked up now. Lotta good some of them cash plus deals were.

[jensend]

charlie the maltplus concept is a step in the right direction if there is going to be a single desk agency marketing malt. better would be to have maltsters contracting directly with farmers and negotiating standards and price between the two biggest stakeholders in the negotiation. a compulsory marketing agency is a cost to the market and somebody has to pay. in the case of supply management the consumer is paying the real cost of the product and the producer is being compensated because he has a selling agent with the market power (mandated) to make it work. the cwb does not have enough market power to capture, on its own, set prices for canadian farmers. this is where the single desk falls apart. its price inefficiencies are paid for by grain growers. the way around this is supply management with no exports but what the heck would we do with all that technology? we've reached the point where we go to the open market, let the chips fall where they may and probably watch the emergence of more pricing and marketing co-ops. the cwb, in trying to become more, is probably becoming less and its time to start over if enough feel a marketing board is needed. from the comments here it's easy to see that some who want the wheat board gone will actually miss some of the options they have now in terms of contracting into pools. let the market run, such as it does, and either make or break grainfarmers because enough is enough. my biggest objection to the board is property rights based so let 'er go.

[charliep]

Fair enough. Just a highlight, the thread is about
barley and its very specific market needs operating
along side an open market versus wheat where CWB
control over human consumption (domestic and
export) drives the system. Out of an average 12
MMT crop, about 8 to 9 MMT is feed domestically,
another 500,000 used as seed and finally 200,000
tonnes used by the domestic brewing industry
(down from the 300,000 to 350,000 the CWB talks
about - a good indication we are drinking Canadian
beer produced from imported malt. That leaves 2
to 2.5 MMT the CWB handles (malt barley, malt
barley sold to domestic maltsters ultimately sold
exported as malt and occasionally feed barley.