End CWB Single Desk By 2012-13: Ritz

Working strategically with Cargill and the railways.
Farmers be damned.

Nice.

Oh, see my sig for another Gerry Ritz quote on the subject.

Upside seen for Viterra if wheat board monopoly broken

And so it begins. Know where this extra profit for Viterra comes from? Farmer's pockets.

That's money that is currently returned to farmers by the Wheat Board.

Seen this?

No, I hadn't.

Propaganda, hogwash, bullshit, indoctrination...

Okay, I got the "Propaganda, hogwash, bullshit, indoctrination..." side of it, why do you support the CWB? I'm genuinely curious, considering the CWB isn't a priority in Windsor.

My personal income will not be affected one way or the other, but most of my immediate family farms in Saskatchewan.

If you follow the intire chain from inputs a farmer has to buy (like seed, fertalizer, equipment) right to the end product the consumer buys (beer, pasta, etc) every step in the process must profit, right? If the price on the supermaket shelf is divided into a pie chart of total profit available, every step in the process gets a slice. Right now, the slice designated for grain marketing or the guys right after farmers is designated to the CWB. The CWB is not for profit, it returns its profit to the farmers.

The board consists of mostly farmers elected by farmers. So when you replace the CWB with a private organization, that piece of pie is obviously not goint to be finding it's way back to the farmers any more.

That's the simplest way I can think of explaining it.

Then the fact that the board is the single largest seller on the globe gives them some leverage in negoriating better shipment deals with railways, and recently they've purchased a couple of ships to get farmers a piece of that action.

Their mandate is to increase profit at the farm level. Whose profit is a private company going to be looking out for?

That's all the internet time I have for tonight.

Is it true that Canadian farmers can't independently sell their wheat or other grain crops if somebody is willing to pay more than the CWB?

Edit: I mean, right now, it sounds like a farming cooperative, which is something that family farms join to help support their business, with such high costs without immediate return. Nothing wrong with that.

Wheat and barley, that's correct. If you want to play the markets yourself, you currently have to grow something else. There's lots of other crops you can market yourself.


http://www.brandonsun.com/breaking-news ... Comments=y

Online petition, please sign: http://www.gov.mb.ca/farmers/

3,604 as of right now...

Couldn't they turn the Wheat Board into a voluntary co-op for famers? So people can opt in or out? Wouldn't that work?

That's what I was thinking too.

No it wouldn't. For reasons why read any of the other threads on the subject. Not sure if that would help as I know Andyt has posted the same question right after said explanations.