A thankyou to my fellow canadians

[KrazyHorse]

Oh, and by the way, with 20% of the international market it will also exercise significant price control internationally.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


It raises domestic prices due to trade barriers we have in place.

Hahahahahahaha!

Tell me what moron ever proposed importing wheat to Canada.

[KrazyHorse]

Hmmm. Seems like no more quotas. I think they got tossed out due to WTO and NAFTA requirements

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Tell me what moron ever proposed importing wheat to Canada

I'm sure the morons down south would love to sell us wheat which has had 2/3 of its cost paid for by the US federal government

[KrazyHorse]

Dump the wheat board. If farmers want to set up their own voluntary coops that's fine with me.

I just don't understand what you think Eastern Canada is getting out of this deal...

[KrazyHorse]

NYE's wheat board:

1) Voluntary association
2) Controlled by Westerners (as it already is)
3) I'm assuming that the federal government still gets to pick up the tab when the Board runs a deficit?

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


I'm talking about the ****ing grain farmers, not the Board.

If they get to choose to sell either to the Board at stabilised prices or to an outside party then the Board loses at both ends, and the shortfall will be made up by the average taxpayer.

What sort of Wheat Board do you envision, NYE? What would its role be?

OK. I will stop escalating and start at the beginning.

The board gets the wheat. They then sell it for what they can get. They have to accept all deliveries, far from there being quotas. Boom or bust is the life of the prairie farmer. You often have none of it, or very little, and then the next year you are swimming in it. This isn't oil, or even cows. This is nature writ large. How much rain, when, and how much sunshine, when? Then multiply by areas of land larger than most countries. Those are the regulators. Mother Earth sets the quotas.

The farmers then get a cut of Board revenues based on what they delivered.

The Board did stabalise things. 70 years ago during a world wide economic crisis that was complicated by near drought conditions moving across the prairies. It made sense then and was a good thing to do rather than simply write cheques to the farmers to keep them afloat. The goal was to protect isolated farmers from speculators, and it worked.

It is doing not as much good now.

First off, the farmers have transport capable of moving their own product a large distance if need be to deliver to market. They are not isolated.

They also are very accutely aware of market conditions since they have modern communications.

What many of them want is a market. Choices. So much so that they would risk prison to make a statement.

The Wheat Board could continue to serve as a major exporting agency (in deals with places like Iran or China, for instance) but the farmers would also benefit from being able to sell directly to local concerns as well as crossing the border to sell directly to Yank concerns.

More than anything else, you eliminate a long standing grievance by lifting the monopoly status of the board. Nothing else in Canada is managed in such a centralised and condescending manner, except maybe uranium.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


I'm sure the morons down south would love to sell us wheat which has had 2/3 of its cost paid for by the US federal government

You don't get it.

We outgrow them in high quality wheat, and we do it despite their subsidies.

But all that is irrelevant as our Wheat Board has to sell the stuff at the prices depressed by American and European state intervention. The Canadian government is not pumping dime one into supporting the Canadian price of wheat, and Canadian food manufacturers are free to import, if they want to spend the gas when the railroad is already set up to deliver the produce of the West to Central Canadian distribution points.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Dump the wheat board. If farmers want to set up their own voluntary coops that's fine with me.

I just don't understand what you think Eastern Canada is getting out of this deal...

It's a matter of Eastern paternalism that insists on managing the Western economy despite our objections, strenuous to the point of people willing to go to jail over the issue.

[Dinner]

So a reformed board, in your mind, would act as a buyer of last resort? If the farmers couldn't find their own buyer then the board would be obligated to buy it from them?

It seems the board would get all of the downsides but none of the upsides in that sort of arrangement.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
NYE's wheat board:

1) Voluntary association

Yes

2) Controlled by Westerners (as it already is)

No. A monopoly of marketing mandated by Parliament. They don't have to produce the stuff, but they deny anyone else the ability to sell it.

3) I'm assuming that the federal government still gets to pick up the tab when the Board runs a deficit?

When was that?

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Oerdin
So a reformed board, in your mind, would act as a buyer of last resort? If the farmers couldn't find their own buyer then the board would be obligated to buy it from them?

It seems the board would get all of the downsides but none of the upsides in that sort of arrangement.

Nope. They would be free to bid for grain for their export deals, which comprise 20% of the world market for wheat, so I assume they could manage.

[notyoueither]

They would still buy a majority of the wheat from Canadian farmers, unless of course private concerns did not offer better terms. You know, competition and all that.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by notyoueither

3) I'm assuming that the federal government still gets to pick up the tab when the Board runs a deficit?

When was that?

The largest deficit was in 1991, when it got 1.1 billion dollars from the feds.

The most recent deficit was in 2003, which ran to a more modest 86 million.

[notyoueither]

Source for that?