BartSimpson BartSimpson:
If Ivan has a contract for the three cars and he gets bigfooted in violation of the contract he can enforce the contract in court. If he thinks he can just ask for three cars like hailing a cab he's mistaken.
You are assuming that CN contracts come with a delivery time line. They don't. It's basically 'when we get there'. And there is a known lack of railcars, so who suffers? The small fry.
$1:
Data from the Ag Transport Coalition suggests that Canadian National Railway’s car order fulfilment rate dropped to 68 percent in Week 11 of the 2017-18 crop year and 51 percent in Week 12.
Over the past year or more, CN’s order fulfilment rate has generally been in the 80s or 90s.
“That’s concerning,” said Sobkowich.
“Most of the car orders that have been delayed are being filled the next week, so it’s not an extreme situation yet.… Having car order fulfilment delayed by a week is one thing, but if that slips to two weeks, then three weeks and then orders start getting cancelled outright, then we could quickly end up in a pretty tough situation that lasts for the rest of the crop year.”
http://www.producer.com/2017/11/grain-s ... e-network/BartSimpson BartSimpson:
The government of California would get fucked up the ass in Federal court for trying to break up a voluntary cooperative that operates under the Freedom of Association Clause of the First Amendment.
That scenario is a non-starter in this country. Even in Commiefornia.
You speak hypothetical still, right?
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
$1:
That's the problem here. Without the Wheat Board, and without the ability of Farmers to re-create their own version of it, our food supply becomes just another multinational asset.
It was before, too. That was the whole point of the port at Churchill and the railroad that served it.
No, much of our food was supplied by the average local farmer. Gradually that has shifted to multinational owned farms, and has moved further and further away.
The point of Churchill was to ship it to Europe and Russia, and import things from there.
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
Then from my perspective the CWB was hamstringing the wheat farmers since other products didn't need a marketing board. Like any other bureaucracy that's created for a 'great' government purpose it transformed over the years into a jobs and pension program for government employees and it actually did damage to the farmers it was supposed to protect and this is illustrated by the success and prosperity of farmers who were not beholden to government control.
The only hamstring was that if farmers wanted to sell their own grain, they had to sell it to the WB frst, then buy it back. Only on the books, but they end up paying the difference between the wheat board's low price and their costs, and their profit came from the difference in WB price and market price.
Eastern Canada farmers didn't have to do that.
$1:
For some in the industry, the end of the wheat board was a victory in an emotional fight to increase profitability and efficiency — some farmers went to jail in the 1990s for taking their grain across the border to sell illegally in the U.S.
But Wells, a former wheat board director who chairs the Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board, sees the government action as a hammer blow that continues to hurt the average producer.
“There’s no question it’s the single biggest transfer of wealth away from farmers over to the grain trade in the 150-year history of this country,” said Wells, who works 2,500 acres near Swift Current, Sask.
“It’s amounted to billions of dollars every year since 2012.”
Most members in a wheat board plebiscite voted to keep the monopoly, a result the government dismissed.
A 2015 study by University of Saskatchewan agricultural economist Richard Gray concluded insufficient capacity in the grain handling and transportation system during the big 2013-14 and 2014-15 crop years cut producer incomes between $5 billion and $6.7 billion.
Mohammad Torshizi, a grain transportation specialist at the University of Alberta’s faculty of agricultural, life and environmental sciences, said the impact would have been smaller under the wheat board because farmers wouldn’t have rushed to sell before prices became even worse.
(link below)
Incidentally, Agrium had great years in 2014 and 2015!
http://www.agrium.com/en/investors/financial-reportingBartSimpson BartSimpson:
True. But there's nothing stopping them from joining together in a cooperative which would be more responsive to market forces than a government agency would be.
I'm pretty sure I've just enumerated why it's impossible for them to re-form the wheat board, or anything similar.
$1:
In theory, major firms such as Richardson International and Glencore compete with each other to buy grain from farmers, but in reality most growers have little choice about where they can sell because the number of nearby elevators is limited, Wells says.
The companies don’t have to accept deliveries as they did under the wheat board, and new infrastructure they’re building will ultimately be funded through the expenses they charge farmers, he said.
“The whole system has switched to … where all the market power rests with the grain companies.”
http://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-n ... d-monopolyBartSimpson BartSimpson:
The biggest problem with Churchill is the shitty location. There's just no fixing that.
Quite the opposite. It's almost dead center of Canada, has deep water ports with access to the Atlantic and Arctic oceans with open water to Northern Europe and Russia for most of the year. If there were highways instead of just rail, there would be much more traffic through it. With no rail, everything has to be flown in.
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