Category Archives: General

OTTAWA, June 5, 2008 – Canadian Wheat Board Chair Larry Hill confirmed that an overwhelming majority of Western Canadian farmers are demanding barley marketing freedom during his appearance before the Senate Agriculture Committee today. David Herle, a long-time Liberal insider and Ralph Goodale advisor, conducted the poll for the CWB. Continue reading →

CWB’s advertising & promotional spending

$1.307 million in 03-04
$1.928 million in 04-05
$1.639 million in 05-06
$1.417 million in 06-07

There are no limits as to how much of farmers money the Board can spend on advertising and self promotion. Continue reading →

ALTHOUGH we’re now hearing arguments that Prairie farmers should decide the issue by means of a vote, the Canadian Wheat Board’s monopoly was not originally imposed by popular demand. Nor was it created to enhance the financial well-being of Prairie farmers. It was implemented in the autumn of 1943 as a wartime price-control measure.

The board was started in 1935, the result of a series of very bad managerial decisions by the three Prairie wheat pools. In the 1920s, the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, Manitoba Pool Elevators and the Alberta Wheat Pool jointly operated a voluntary board called the Central Selling Agency (CSA), and it operated successfully in a free market. (More)

Morris Dorosh put the barley vote in its proper prospective in his weekly publication agriweek.

“Over the last two years Alberta farmers grew 48.8% of the barley in western Canada, Saskatchewan farmers 42.3% and Manitoba 8.8%. The 50.6% of farmers in Manitoba who want the monopoly retained account for no more than 4.5% of the barley grown on the prairies, those in Saskatchewan for 19.1% and in Alberta for 7.4%. Those are small numbers.”

Rolf Penner- Here is how they are going to make it work in Australia. Unsurprisingly, they will still be offering ‘pooling’. The naysayers up here keep telling us a voluntary pool won’t work. They’re wrong of course and the Aussies are going give us another example of how it can work. This comes courtesy of Callum Downs Commodity News.

 July 8/08  AWB Wheat Marketing 2008/09 Season

 Yesterday I was briefed by Gordon Davis, Mitch Morison and Ian  Desborough on a number of issues, including their plans for wheat marketing for the first year of deregulation. Here are some points from those talks. Continue reading →

Rolf Penner- As of tonight the stat counter on this website registered it’s 2000 th page view. Not to shabby considering it only went online October 15. A big thank-you to everyone who has come by to take a look so far.

Keep coming back I’ve got plenty of more good stuff to show you every single day.

Rolf Penner- Well it really wasn’t so much of a debate as it was 5 guys answering a few questions. I tried to get a bit of a back and forth going with Bill Toews, but he didn’t like it and didn’t seem to want an actual exchange.  Which is too bad, I think farmers would have really liked to hear us actually debate our ideas in a more open manner.

 I was really impressed with Barry Reimer and Curtis Sims. I will not be one bit sorry if either of them get elected, I think they’re both solid guys with good heads on their shoulders who’ll do a good job of representing farmers interests around the board table. They are of the same belief as me, the board needs to be voluntary but it definitely should remain an option for farmers who want to use it. Continue reading →