To the Editor:
As bidding heats up to take over Viterra Inc., the inevitable consequences of eliminating the Canadian Wheat Board's single-desk selling system are emerging - for better or worse.
Private grain companies, domestic and foreign, all believe they'll enlarge their businesses and increase profits for their shareholders (profits the CWB used to capture for farmers).
With fewer "aggravations" like producer cars and short-line rail systems to worry about, with no enforceable contracts with shippers, probably no "revenue cap", and no one with the clout to challenge them, the railways will certainly make more money moving grain.
Without the Wheat Board, value-added processors believe they'll be able to buy the grain inputs they need at lower prices, and thereby increase their margins.
Our foreign customers expect Canadian grain to be cheaper now, because it will be marketed as just another bulk commodity, not a distinctly-Canadian, premium product.
So what's wrong with this picture? All these new profits for everyone in the system have to come from somewhere - probably from farmers. That's where you'll find the short end of the stick.
The first domino to fall is Viterra, Canada's biggest grain company and Saskatchewan's biggest business.
It may get bought-out by a big global GrainCo, like ADM, with real control shifting from Regina to Decatur, Illinois. Or the buyer may be a huge Swiss-based commodity trader known as "Glencore", who would chop it all up.
Glencore would keep the grain handling operations (so control would move to Switzerland), but the food processing division might go to Richardson's in Winnipeg, and the farm supplies business might go to Agrium in Calgary.
It's nice to see a couple of Canadian players involved, but what's the common denominator? Saskatchewan loses!
And as the grain business consolidates, where's all that new private sector competition? Wasn't that the point of getting rid of the CWB?
Ralph Goodale, MP, Wascana, SK.
