Kiss the millions goodbye
Waldeck - Wednesday, December 21, 2011 by: Henry Neufeld
Last week at the Strudwick farm, east of Regina, a farm building full of open marketers got the news they wanted to hear. Starting in the new crop year, they will be able to market their own wheat and barley.
Former Western Canadian Wheat Growers president, (Cherilyn Jolly-Nagel was elated.) Under the bright lights of the TV cameras, she signed an open market forward contract to sell some wheat with the statement ‘that sure feels good’.
It seems not one of the open marketers saw the irony of it all. She is not going to market her own grain; the contract she signed was for a broker to sell her grain for her. Tell us Cherilyn how much per bushel are the broker fees going to cost you. Doesn’t she know the world biggest and best marketer earns multi millions above operating costs? In the end, her wheat is marketed for free. Doesn’t she know a 500 million annual premium farmers share in when marketing through the CWB is being traded away? For what, so Cherilyn can pay a broker to market her wheat for her?
Once the wheat is sold to the multinationals it is no longer the farmer’s grain – things like terminal blending or premium quality sales, those dollars flow into corporate pockets. With the CWB, those extra dollars flowed into farmer pockets. The farmers can kiss those millions goodbye.
Like my friend and mentor said to me, ‘Yes, it is true there are farmers in western Canada that are that stupid’.