Dear Editor
I must apologise to all the people to whom I said the loss of the Canadian Wheat Board would mean a loss of about $20/tonne on the price of wheat. I was wrong. It seems to be more than three times that bad.
This past year I have noticed the almost complete disappearance of the premium we used to get for the high protein wheat we are famous for. To be sure of the numbers I have researched the Saskatchewan price of feed wheat (Statistics Canada) and compared it to the CWB final price for high protein No. 2 CWRS. I went back eight years for the comparison and determined that the average price difference was about $79 per tonne. This past year the average price difference has been about $3 per tonne or approximately 79 per cent of what the long term average indicated we should be getting. I used estimates from local elevator managers for a current average.
Some economists try to excuse the low prices by saying because there was so much high protein wheat across the prairies the demand, and therefore the price, had fallen. Those economists sound embarrassed when they say this because we all know lots of high protein wheat is normal for us. In this past crop year, the protein was not even particularly high. Every excuse I have heard for the depressed price has existed before, singly and in combination, and the effect has never been even close to this drastic. The only different circumstance leading to this change is the loss of our Canadian Wheat Board.
If the CWB usually handles about 15 million tonnes of high protein wheat per year and we have missed out on about $75/tonne, that's well over a billion dollars out of the pockets of prairie farmers. Demand that your local Conservative MP explain how this is a good thing.
Glenn Tait
Meota
Region 6 NFU Director
