Talk:Canadian Wheat Board
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Some information (or links to it) on the nature of American grain subsidies would be useful. Also a link to Common agricultural policy or similar. Mr. Jones 09:34, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Monopsony?
The CWB is not a Monopsony. It is a single-desk seller of wheat and barley, hence Monopoly, not Monopsony. I think we should change it. Yes? No? Thanks.
RE: Of course the CWB is a monopsony. If you think that the CWB is the ONLY seller of wheat then you must have some serious mental conditions. Only 20% of the worlds wheat is sold by the CWB, so, I'm trying to figure where these idiotic delusions of yours come from. It could just be that you're some stupid beaurocratic asshole who thinks hes funny spreading propaganda such as what you have written here. Thanks 69.11.82.214 03:11, 11 December 2006 (UTC)ProudFarmer
Hey "ProudFarmer", The CWB is a Monopoly as far as Western Canadian Farmers are concerned as it is the only seller on behalf of farmer of our Wheat and Barley for International consumption and for human domestic consumption. Wheat and Barley can be traded or sold into the Domestic animal feed market only without going through the CWB. In economics, a monopsony is a market form with only one buyer, called "monopsonist," facing many sellers. It is an instance of imperfect competition, symmetrical to the case of a monopoly, in which there is only one seller facing many buyers. I know that many critics of the CWB would like people to think it is a buyer of our grain but it will alway be considered a seller on behalf of farmers as a proper definition. After the Conservative government changes the CWB to be a buyer and hence another grain company, the CWB will soon be bankrupt and then gone from the grain market because it has no facilities. And the idiot CWB hating farmers that think their world will be better will soon follow the CWB along with the dinosaurs into extinction. An Old Cow Hand and Wheat grower.
Well put. I'm sick of these worthless conservatives handing out money and legislation to benefit the corporations. If the CWB were destroyed, the grain handling companies (Agricore, SaskPool, Cargill, Bunge, etc.) would have control over the market. They would buy the grain from farmers for as little as possible and sell it for as much as possible. These are the companies that have destroyed agriculture for western farmers. Manitoba POOL (now Agricore United) and SaskPool were excellent cooperatives at one point that were farmer controled until some conservatives infiltrated them and run them into the ground. The only argument that I've heard from the people that want to get rid of monopoly (not monopsony) is that it will give farmers more 'choice'. Well if getting more choice causes farmers to lose at least 20 dollars per tonne of wheat in addition premiums that are fairly extracted from the market because of the monopoly. I don't think it is worth it. If you are going to do that, you might as well make traffic lights voluntary. It may cause more traffic accidents, but it allows people to have more 'choice.'
If the CWB is lost, it will spell out the same economic loses, witnessed when conservative types removed the Crow Rate. The same people trying to remove the CWB monopoly were the same fine fellows that removed the Crow Rate.
Also when Strahl appoints people that are opposed the Wheat Board, to the board, he is only destroying its effectiveness. It would be like appointing Osama bin Laden to the head of CSIS or the CIA. It would be contrary to logic. Why would you appoint someone that will only bring the demise of an organization?
RE: Now you bring up the crow rate. When the liberals killed the crow, it was supposed to encourage local processing, more value-added industries to occur on the prairies, right? I think this is something that we all can agree did not happen. How could it? There are many ways that the government could of made this work. I think that the CWB, free from government beaurocracy, could actually help the farmers of Canada greatly. But the way that it is run now does not work. There is not reason that we should have to give our grain to the board and then have no way to boycott them if we don't believe that their doing the best possible job. The CWB has no accountability. Lets just split the difference, lets just try something to see what happens. GET RID of some of the wheat boards powers. The first thing to do is get rid of the buy-back. This "should" inspire some sort of local processing boom and perhaps actually help the farmers. The buy-back does the farmers no good who actually want to make a little extra money. Feel free to respond to me, I'd love to hear more of your opinions.
ProudFarmer. email: proud.farmer@hotmail.com
[edit] A Fair bit of Bias
Some shots at Strahl, also as though written by the CWB itself. I'm somewhat sympathetic to the viewpoint, but it's still an npov problem. Gabrielthursday 00:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Changes made by thrace
I just made quite a few changes to the page, although quite a few more should be made in order for it to be accurate. I'm new to Wikipedia so I noticed after the fact that there was a request not to make changes to the page because it was 'controversial'. Anyway, I hope this is not a problem. Quite a few more changes need to be made, and I'm sure my own additions will need some edits. A few of the edits I made were meant to better reflect recent events around the wheat board and the news articles already cited in the page. For example, it was previously suggested that 7 out of 15 districts elected farmers who supported Strahl's plan for the board. This is not what happened and nor is it even what is suggested by the news article cited. Only 10 directorships are elected and only 5 are up for election at any one time. In the election 4 out of 5 of the farmers elected support the single desk (which means they oppose Strahl's plan) leaving the board in the position it was in before the election with 8 out of 10 farmer elected directors supporting its monopoly. The news article cited implies that this was a defeat for Strahl, but the page as it was previously written implies the reverse. Furthermore the page previously suggested that many farmers were disenfranchised suggesting that this places real doubts on the result without identifying who did the disenfranchising. Many farmers were disenfranchised but they were disenfranchised by Strahl, the minister of agriculture, during the election period. The absence of this information means that the article seems to imply that Strahl's 'side' almost won the election but lost because farmers were disenfranchised. In fact Strahl's side lost 4 out of 5 seats in spite of the fact that Strahl intervened to have several thousand farmers taken off the voter's list. The fact that Strahl can still count on the support of 7 of the 15 directors is that 5 are appointees, appointed by the government and accountable to him as the minister of agriculture. The farm community in Western Canada is certainly divided on the wheatboard but it is not as narrowly divided as was suggested.
I took out the claim that the board is actually a monopsony. This is a claim that could only be made by opponents of the board and I think one would be hard pressed to find a mainstream source (both for or against) which use that term to describe the board. It might make sense, to identify that some opponents consider the board to be a monopsony rather than a monopoly emphasing its relationship to farmers over its relationship to outside buyers, but I'm not even sure if this terminology is widely used by its opponents. And economically speaking I think one would be hard pressed to justify this claim. The Wheat Board, as a marketing board for farmers does not make a profit because of the requirement that farmers sell through it. It is a non profit agency. It does not accrue market power to anyone over its monopsony with Canadian farmers. It is supposed to operate as a monopoly over the selling of Western Canadian wheat and barley in order increase the market power of farmers in the world market. One could make an argument that the board fails to operate an effective monopoly (and its opponents often do make that argument) but that is a different argument and has nothing to do with monopsony.
I also tried to explain the different positions on the board in a bit more detail, although this needs some more detail, and some citation.
I'm pro board and this might come through in my changes. I tried to be fair to the anti-board side, but may have not been altogether successful. I'm open to changes but was very irritated at the way the current issues around the board were represented before.
One last note. It is false that farmer have served jail time because of the wheat board or the wheat board act. Years ago, in the 1990s, some farmers opposed to the wheat board sought to cross the US border with truckloads of grain. They refused to disclose the contents of the trucks and had the trucks impounded under the Canada customs act (which has no connection to the Board). They then broke into parking lot where there trucks were impounded took them back and were arrested. They were charged and found guilty under the customs act and opted to serve jail time rather than pay the fine because the optics on that were better for their cause. Anyway, this kind of claim is all the better for citation, but there is currently no citation on the claim on the page that farmers were arrested for selling wheat outside the wheat board.
--kthrace--
