10. Pooling. It’s an equitable distribution of wealth – some win, some lose. Get over it.
9. Equity. Everyone gets the same price. It’s lower than you’d get otherwise – but at least everyone gets the same. Would hate to see someone get ahead.
8. Monopoly / single desk. Everyone welcome; you don’t even need to sign up. “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”
7. Fewer processors ruining the prairie view. If I wanted all the noise, dust and traffic, I’d move to the city. This way, my kid has to move to the city to find work. Great – gets him out of my hair.
6. Variety registration. The CWB makes sure farmers can’t grow those pesky US varieties of wheat. Who needs fusarium resistance anyway?
5. Premiums. Let’s see – premiums of $6.65/tonne and marketing costs of $10.40/tonne. I guess they make it up in volume.
4. Cash flow. If you ask for more, you’re just being selfish.
3. Protection from nasty multi-nationals. Don’t you just hate it that you’re forced to deal with them on canola - just to pay your wheat and durum bills?
2. Discretionary Trading. Where else could you lose close to $350 million speculating with no repercussions? (2007-08)
And the number one reason for keeping the CWB:
1. That Darn Plebiscite. My neighbours decided for me.
I attended the Farm Progress Show in Regina. Most of the equipment on display cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. I am proud that Saskatchewan Farmers have developed the business acumen to purchase these machines and make them pay the bills. To shackle them to an outdated marketing system managed by a Board of ideologues is the greatest insult of all.
ReplyDeleteI am not a producer; merely a consumer. I fail to see how keeping a single desk benefits anyone, except the Board. It's simple, really: the Board bureaucrats want to hang on to their jobs, whatever the cost to the producers. And if it's so darn good, why only in the prairies?
ReplyDeleteShades of the Soviet Union.
Reason #11. No profit from wheat and barley means No income tax to pay.
ReplyDeleteI just saw a piece where the Manitoba government supports a producers' plebiscite. No surprise there! Isn't the best plebiscite of all one in which the producers decide whether (or not) to sell their grain to the CWB? In my experience, most government bureaucrats couldn't run a piss-up at a brewery. I would lump the CWB in with the aforementioned.
ReplyDeleteWhen I think of the Wheat board beaurocrats it reminds me of the line from the movie "Blazing Saddles"......"How are we gonna protect our phony balony jobs"
ReplyDeleteBe careful what you wish for. We were promised good thing would happen when the Conservatives got rid of the Crow. Now the conservatives are once again promising pie in the sky "Freedom". Well, there's a song that says it all, "Freedoms just another word for nothin left to lose."
ReplyDelete