Canada Wheat Board in troubled waters

OTTAWA (Commodity Online) : Canada’s famous CanadianWheat Board might lose its marketing powers in time for the 2012-13 crop year if changes proposed by the Canadian government are put in place this season.

Speaking at a news meet, CWB chairman Allen Oberg said "Whatever the future holds, one thing is certain, if the single desk is eliminated, the landscape of Prairie wheat marketing will change drastically and the CWB will end. If a new organization is created, it will bear no resemblance to the CWB that exists today."

Canada’s majority Conservative government intends to introduce legislation this fall to end the CWB’s current single desk marketing powers for western Canadian wheat and barley. The government also intends to change the CWB Act in order to remove the need for a farmer plebiscite.

The CWB recently conducted its own survey of farmers and will release the results Sept. 9. Oberg said the CWB’s farmer-controlled board of directors is calling on the federal government to respect the results and abide by the wishes of Prairie farmers.

"We as Prairie farmers are facing an uncertain future," Oberg said. "The government intends to take our marketing power away.

"We have not been consulted, nor has there been any government analysis of the impact on farm families and the grain industry from dismantling an economic model that adds an extra half billion dollars a year for Prairie farmers," he said.

"The future is far from clear at this point, but whatever happens we must all work to ensure that farmers’ interests are not put last."

However, The CWB’s board of directors has continued to make the case the organization serves at the pleasure of farmers.

The board has made it clear it would not have any objections to its dismantling if a majority of farmers want to sell on the open market.

The CWB board of directors say the federal government’s decision to dismantle the board has not included any analysis of the impacts and has not laid out any scenarios of how farmers will be served in its absence.

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