Canada: The Day the Wheat Board died

[blake 3:17]

This refers to one of the worst things our Conservative government has done. Farmers are going to be more screwed than they were and agricultural land is very likely to be abused unless something drastic happens quickly.


The Day the Wheat Board Died

Gavin Fridell

On August 1, 2012, the Conservative government will bring an end to a major Canadian institution and one of the world's largest, longest-standing, and most successful “state trading enterprises.” After 70 years as the state-mandated monopoly seller of most Western Canadian wheat, the Canadian Wheat Board will officially become “voluntary,” meaning the death of anything resembling what it has been.


The board has been widely praised and defended by many grain farmers and progressive supporters, as well as relentlessly attacked, even despised, by others. In the end, those opposed to the Board, although highly vocal and backed by powerful corporate interests, would appear to be in the minority. This minority, however, has won the day. The Canadian Conservative government of Stephen Harper legislated the end of the board in December 2011 without holding a vote among prairie grain farmers even though it is required by the Canadian Wheat Board Act. Despite a recent Wheat Board plebiscite in which the majority of farmers voted in favour of maintaining the Board's status, and despite a Federal court ruling at the end of 2011 that determined the government's actions were illegal, the Conservatives have continued unabated in their moves to dismantle the Board, with Harper arguing that when western farmers voted Conservative in the last election (which the majority did) they voted for “marketing freedom.”[1]

The government has appealed the court ruling and by the time the issue is cleared up, the Board as it has been known will be long gone. Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board, a coalition of Canadian farmer groups, including the National Farmers Union (a founding member of La Via Campesina, an international peasant movement opposed to corporate control of the global food system) have taken a lead role in the class action suit against the government and are now seeking billions of dollars in compensation for prairie farmers rather than the return of the Board.

“Market Freedom”

The long-standing debate over the future of the Wheat Board has frequently been framed as an ideological one around “market freedom.” And, indeed, ideology has been a major factor. Despite giving hundreds of millions of dollars each year in subsidies to Alberta oil sands companies, to cite just one example, members of the Conservative government fashion themselves as libertarians, opposed to state intervention in the market, and have been virulently opposed to the Board. In partnership with the neoconservative Alberta government and powerful private interests, millions of dollars have been spent over the past several years attacking the Board, portraying it as something akin to a Stalinist nightmare, and attempting to erase its gains from history. “There has been a whole lot of rewriting of history,” says Robert Roehle, President of the Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board, in a recent interview.

At the same time, the battle over the Board was not solely ideological but significantly driven by class interests. Intense economic and political pressure from giant agribusiness was clearly aligned behind the Conservative government and those farmers opposed to the Board. While anti-Board farmers may be a minority overall, this minority likely includes the largest farmers who now produce more grain than the rest of Canadian farmers and are increasingly linked to powerful biotechnology and livestock sectors – more grain is now grown in North America to feed animals than humans. Despite the existence of the Board, the number of wheat farmers in Canada has been on a steady decline for decades, with small farmers increasingly squeezed out, while the incomes of remaining farmers have grown. The future of the Board has long been tenuous in the face of expanding corporate dominance of the Canadian and international agrifood system – and the giant grain traders are now rubbing their hands in anticipation of seizing control of the multi-billion dollar market once managed by the Board.[2] Against these odds, the persistence and long history of the Wheat Board is all that more remarkable.

http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/671.php

[JoeySteel]

This refers to one of the worst things our Conservative government has done. Farmers are going to be more screwed than they were and agricultural land is very likely to be abused unless something drastic happens quickly.



http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/671.php

Yup. Likewise the Trans-Pacific Partnership poses huge danger to farmers and next they are going to go after dairy supply management:

http://cpcml.ca/Tmlw2012/W42029.HTM#2



No to the Trans-Pacific Partnership!
Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiations Spell Danger for Canada's Agriculture
- Dougal MacDonald -

The Harper dictatorship's campaign to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Asia-Pacific free trade group founded by New Zealand, Singapore, Chile, and Brunei in 2005, has escalated. Harper announced from Mexico on June 19 that all nine TPP member countries -- the other five are the United States, Australia, Peru, Malaysia and Viet Nam -- have agreed that Canada can join the negotiations to be held early this fall, although prior talks will go ahead first without Canada in July. Mexico has also been invited in. To obtain an invitation, Canada's International Trade Minister Ed Fast spent weeks earlier this year jetting to various TPP member countries to secure their required unanimous consent to Canada's participation. The contents of his discussions and deals remain secret.

An important issue for Canada's farmers and their many allies is that countries in the TPP such as the U.S. and New Zealand are insisting that in order to join, Canada must first agree to dismantle its dairy supply management system that governs production and sale of milk, butter and cheese. In referring to the TPP, Harper has been forced to admit that supply management fosters a healthy dairy sector, but he has also stated that everything will be on the table during TPP negotiations. Canada's dairy supply management maintains stable and consistent dairy prices for producers, processors and consumers, eliminates reliance on subsidies, and ensures a constant and certain supply of quality milk and milk products. For example, since February 2001, 100 per cent of Alberta's dairy producer revenues have been derived from the market.

Less than 24 hours after Harper first announced interest in the TPP on December 1, 2011, the Globe and Mail monopoly newspaper published a vicious attack entitled, "It hurts dancing to supply management's tune," in which farmers who support supply management were equated with "political terrorists" and "racketeers." This campaign against supply management has escalated. In mid-December a long-time CBC TV political commentator, who had already attacked supply management in an August 15, 2011 article in Maclean's magazine, publicly referred to supply management as a "rip-off," trying to play the "greedy farmer" card. This same commentator published another article in the monopoly media on June 23, where he claimed, "Virtually every economist or policy analyst of note agrees that supply management is a disgrace." The author's definition of "of note" being, of course, anyone who agrees that supply management should be dismantled!

Just days earlier, on June 20, a business professor from Western University published an op-ed piece in the Globe and Mail which concluded, "Even if Canada were not seeking to sign new free trade deals, supply management should come to an end." On June 22, former Liberal MP Martha Hall-Findlay, now an executive fellow at University of Calgary's School of Public Policy, released a report that attacked supply management as harmful to the Canadian people. In a letter released to the media July 5 titled "Stop lying to Canadians about supply management," Maurice Doyon, professor at Laval University's Department of Agricultural Economics and Consumer Sciences, said Hall-Findlay's report was "not fact-based." He noted, for example, that while Hall-Findlay claims that Canadians pay an average of $9.60 for four litres of milk, government statistics show that the price of milk averages about $5.20 for four litres. He pointed out that Hall-Findlay used the price of more expensive whole milk when 50 per cent of Canadians drink two per cent milk. The National Farmer's Union also published a detailed refutation entitled, "The NFU Rejects Completely Martha Hall-Findlay's Anti-Supply Management Report" (see below).

On July 6, Agriculture Canada then released an internal 2011 study which attacks supply management claiming, "Farms in the heavily protected dairy, poultry and egg sectors, concentrated primarily in Central Canada, are far more likely than those in other sectors to be high-priced operations owned by corporations." Playing on the people's staunch opposition to the monopoly control of agriculture by private corporations that the Harper dictatorship totally supports, the report attempts to mobilize public opinion against supply management. Dairy Farmers of Canada (DFC) spokeswoman Therese Beaulieu refuted the Agriculture Canada report by pointing out that 99 per cent of dairy farms are family-owned and operated, "even the larger ones." According to DFC figures, the average size of a Canadian dairy farm is 78 milk-producing cows, while just 1.5 per cent of farms have more than 300 cows.

Harper's decision to participate in the TPP and his shock and awe dismantling of the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) in the face of vehement opposition by farmers, workers, and their allies, indicate that he will have no qualms about dismantling the dairy, poultry, and other agricultural supply management systems, regardless of the many benefits to the people of Canada and regardless of his assurances to the contrary. At the same time, Harper appears to be treading cautiously for now due to the powerful opposition expected from farmers and their allies across Canada, especially with his arbitrary dismantling of the CWB still vivid in their memories. It appears that Harper's strategy will be to use the forthcoming TPP negotiations as a pretext for gradually dismantling supply management in Canada under the guise that he must make concessions to our trading partners. The claimed payoff will be that, in return, domestic agricultural producers will gain better access to foreign marketplaces.

Since the Harper dictatorship refuses to discuss what will happen if supply management is wrecked, what will replace it and whether some alternative will be better for the Canadian people, it is instructive to consider what has happened in New Zealand and Australia since their supply management systems were dismantled. In New Zealand, there is increasing concern over the rising price of domestic milk products. Australia's farms are struggling. Milk exports have increased but the producer-owned farms are fighting with food giants like Coles Supermarkets and Woolworths Supermarkets to be paid a fair price for their milk. Between them, Coles and Woolworths control 75 per cent of the Australian grocery market. The Australian farmers are lobbying the government to intervene in the price dispute. As well, the 11 cent premium put on milk by the Australian government in order to phase out state assistance has had to remain in place due to increasing financial problems faced by the farmers.

The dismantling of the dairy and other agricultural supply management systems poses a grave threat to the well-being of people across Canada. Predictable consequences include elimination of self-employed farmers, loss of many other livelihoods, increased economic insecurity, unstable and rising prices, and a decline in production and quality. Dismantling supply management systems will also mean further opening up the food-producing industry to foreign takeovers. As in the case of the arbitrary wrecking of the CWB, foreign monopolies will be aiming to take control of Canada's dairy and other agricultural industries, as local producer control is destroyed. Already, with the CWB out of the way, Viterra, Canada's leading grain handler, is being taken over by the shady foreign mining monopoly, Glencore, a $6.1 billion dollar sellout deal welcomed by Harper as "expanding Canada's agricultural sector."

and the National Farmers' Union has put out a rejection of the attack on supply management: http://cpcml.ca/Tmlw2012/W42029.HTM#2

[Die Neue Zeit]

This refers to one of the worst things our Conservative government has done. Farmers are going to be more screwed than they were and agricultural land is very likely to be abused unless something drastic happens quickly.

http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/671.php

To be fair, though, I do think the writer is too sympathetic towards small farmers and other non-"farm workers" tilling the land:


In partnership with the neoconservative Alberta government and powerful private interests, millions of dollars have been spent over the past several years attacking the Board, portraying it as something akin to a Stalinist nightmare, and attempting to erase its gains from history. “There has been a whole lot of rewriting of history,” says Robert Roehle, President of the Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board, in a recent interview.

At the same time, the battle over the Board was not solely ideological but significantly driven by class interests. Intense economic and political pressure from giant agribusiness was clearly aligned behind the Conservative government and those farmers opposed to the Board. While anti-Board farmers may be a minority overall, this minority likely includes the largest farmers who now produce more grain than the rest of Canadian farmers and are increasingly linked to powerful biotechnology and livestock sectors – more grain is now grown in North America to feed animals than humans. Despite the existence of the Board, the number of wheat farmers in Canada has been on a steady decline for decades, with small farmers increasingly squeezed out, while the incomes of remaining farmers have grown. The future of the Board has long been tenuous in the face of expanding corporate dominance of the Canadian and international agrifood system – and the giant grain traders are now rubbing their hands in anticipation of seizing control of the multi-billion dollar market once managed by the Board. Against these odds, the persistence and long history of the Wheat Board is all that more remarkable.

"State trading" was never the way to go relative to "state production," anyway.

As I wrote before and again, the "Stalinist nightmare" occurred because the Soviet government chose a clumsy, middle-of-the-road approach in kolkhoz-ization.

This turn of the page should present the left in Canada an opportunity to advocate socialized vertical farming and monopoly socializations elsewhere in industrial "agrifood" (to use our peculiar terminology). State-owned farm production worked by only farm workers on wages and/or salaries is the way to go, with no ifs, buts, or ands.

[agnixie]

State-owned farm production worked by only farm workers on wages and/or salaries is the way to go, with no ifs, buts, or ands.

Where does the part about workers actually owning the means of production come up in your obsessive bureaucratic fetishism?

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Where does the part about workers actually owning the means of production come up in your obsessive bureaucratic fetishism?

The process does, however, represent a positive gradual step in the proletarianisation of peasants.

Not to mention that just the workers of a particular facility/farm/otherMOP owning the facility on its own (detached from other facilities of the MOP) is even more undesirable (and reeks of market "socialism"). The ownership must be exercised collectively by the proletariat as a class, not as fragmented enterprises.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Where does the part about workers actually owning the means of production come up in your obsessive bureaucratic fetishism?

I'm talking about things "this side of revolution." However, the very premises of a public monopoly on agricultural and other food production and public-sector wage relations for all tillers of the land would stay. Hence, my posts praising the sovkhoz model.


The process does, however, represent a positive gradual step in the proletarianisation of peasants.

Our country doesn't have peasants, only small farmers where non-"farm workers" are concerned.

Also, my advocacy isn't a "gradual step." It's much quicker than you think.

[blake 3:17]

The process does, however, represent a positive gradual step in the proletarianisation of peasants.

Not to mention that just the workers of a particular facility/farm/otherMOP owning the facility on its own (detached from other facilities of the MOP) is even more undesirable (and reeks of market "socialism"). The ownership must be exercised collectively by the proletariat as a class, not as fragmented enterprises.

So you're for the smashing of the Wheat Board?

From the Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board:


8 Reasons to Support the FCWB


Here are 8 crucial reasons why all Canadians should stand up to SUPPORT the FIGHT to SAVE THE CWB. (Some great links are included)

The Canadian Wheat Board has been an icon of organized social democracy in action. It has been a national institution with countless benefits for Canadian farmers and consumers. The kicker: It hasn’t cost consumers 1 penny to run.

BUT NOW ….

The Harper Government has wrecked the Canadian Wheat Board and stripped farmers of their right to vote in defiance of a Federal Court ruling that the legislation is illegal. A government ignoring a Federal Court ruling should concern ALL CANADIANS.

On Dec. 15, 2011, the Harper government passed Bill C-18 even though the court ruled that its introduction to Parliament was illegal. Once that occurred, the farmer-elected Board of Directors was dismissed after Ag Minister Gerry Ritz illegally took control of our CWB by appointing his own 5 puppet directors.

The new CWB is NOT FARMER RUN, it doesn’t hold SINGLE DESK marketing power and on Aug. 1, 2012, it will be a useless marketing company with no grain elevators or product control.

THE GOOD NEWS: Farmers are fighting back. We have launched 3 Court Cases to force Ottawa to obey the law, give farmers back their right to vote, and restore OUR Canadian Wheat Board. Two are in the appeal stage and the most recent is a multiple stage class action – a constitutional argument for ‘freedom of association’ to get the CWB back and then compensation for damages.

TOGETHER WE WILL WIN!

Here are just a few reasons why we are asking Canadians for their voices and support:

1) DEMOCRACY – Harper is taking away farmers’ freedom to choose the fate of OUR Wheat Board. ANY Canadian organization which believes in democratic principles should be deeply concerned. The outcome of our lawsuits will affect all Canadians.

2) CANADIAN SOVEREIGNTY – Don’t let foreign interests run our food system.

3) SUPPLY MANAGEMENT - If the government succeeds with the Wheat Board, our Canadian milk, cheese, chicken, and turkeys are next (PDF).

4) GMO WHEAT – In 2004 western farmers and their Canadian Wheat Board played a key role in stopping the introduction of genetically modified wheat into the market place. Most consumers DON’T WANT IT, but without the CWB, farmers are powerless to stop it.

5) QUALITY LOCAL FOOD – The CWB has worked hard to keep quality grain by Canadian farmers in Canada. Under Bill C-18 grain quality will not be a priority. The government has started the move to harmonize our grain grades with the lower quality standards in the US.

6) BLATANTLY ILLEGAL – On Dec.7, 2011, a Federal Court Judge ruled Harper’s Wheat Board legislation violates the rule of law.

7) FAMILY FARMS - The single desk CWB provides equitable access to the market for all farmers, big or small. Losing the CWB accelerates the loss of family farms. In so doing, it will concentrate farmland ownership in fewer and fewer hands. A blow to the CWB is a blow to family-farm agriculture.

8) STAND UP AGAINST BULLYING – Agriculture Minister, Gerry Ritz has misled Canadians and bullied farmers in order to pass Bill C-18. This is all part of a pattern of disrespect for democracy on the part of the Harper government. Our campaign is transparent with Canadians because we believe facts should trump propaganda. What are Stephen Harper and Gerry Ritz hiding?

More great info can be found on these sites: friendsofcwb.ca and cwbafacts.ca

[Welshy]

Those 8 reasons to support the Wheat Board are horribly petty bourgeois (literally), liberal and quite frankly nationalist. I mean "canadian sovereignty" and "keep quality grain by Canadian farmers in Canada", seriously?

[Salyut]

I can't see anything stopping Harper and co from going through with this. The NFU is far too small to have any hope of stopping the Tory's from killing the board.

Growing up, the one sticking point that was really driving a lot of anti-CWB feeling that I noticed was this:

Farmers in Eastern Canada (east of Manitoba) and most of British Columbia (non-Peace River) are exempt from the CWB's monopsony control of non-feed wheat and barley - these have their own marketing boards, but they are not compulsory.

There was at least one arrest of a guy trying to circumvent the board by crossing the border with his grain truck back in the 80's. Didn't help improve the public image much.

[JPSartre12]

I can't see anything stopping Harper and co from going through with this. The NFU is far too small to have any hope of stopping the Tory's from killing the board.

Growing up, the one sticking point that was really driving a lot of anti-CWB feeling that I noticed was this:


There was at least one arrest of a guy trying to circumvent the board by crossing the border with his grain truck back in the 80's. Didn't help improve the public image much.

Agreed. I'm pretty peeved at Harper, but he does have that unfortunate little thing called a majority government :crying:

Is it possible for us to revolt and overthrow Parliament? :lol:

[blake 3:17]

Agreed. I'm pretty peeved at Harper, but he does have that unfortunate little thing called a majority government :crying:

Is it possible for us to revolt and overthrow Parliament? :lol:

He did win it with less than 40% of the popular vote with a 60% voter turnout -- hardly a ringing endorsement.

Harper's been after the CWB for more than 15 years. He plays a good game... Ick.

[Psy]

Those 8 reasons to support the Wheat Board are horribly petty bourgeois (literally), liberal and quite frankly nationalist. I mean "canadian sovereignty" and "keep quality grain by Canadian farmers in Canada", seriously?
Actually it is bourgeoisie as the Canadian Wheat Board was created to protect the Canadian capitalist class from falling crop prices after WWI (in short to protect the Canadian economy from the over production of food). The US does the same with its farm subsidizes that pay US farmers to not grow food so basically Harper is smashing a patch to the capitalist system that smarter capitalists implemented to protect Canadian capitalists from a contradiction of capital, one the US shows no sign in removing as the US ruling class is far smarter then Harper.