Nothing is Clear....

The results of the Barley vote are in and the controversy does not appear to over. There have been a number of press releases complaining about the process, scrutineers (or lack of) and so on, leading up to the results of the vote becoming public. However, the results are being disputed, vigorously. This past weeks' offerings............

OTTAWA, Ontario, March 28, 2007 - The Honourable Chuck Strahl, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board, today announced that Canada's New Government has listened, and will deliver, to Western Canadian barley producers who voted in favour of marketing choice.

A clear majority of the farmers who cast votes in the barley plebiscite indicated they wanted to end the Canadian Wheat Board's monopoly on barley and have the freedom to market their own product.

"We have delivered on our promise to give farmers a voice on the future of barley marketing in Western Canada," said Minister Strahl. "Their decision in favour of marketing choice is clear and we intend to give them that that opportunity in the coming crop year."

Minister Strahl said that nearly 30,000 producers participated in the plebiscite and a majority has provided the Government with a mandate to move ahead.

"Over 60 percent of producers want to decide how to market their own product. We will now begin work on the appropriate amendments to Canadian Wheat Board regulations to remove barley from the Canadian Wheat Board's monopoly," said Minister Strahl.

"We will move forward decisively because producers and the sector need clarity and market certainty. I will be consulting with the directors of the Canadian Wheat Board about the changes we will be making," said Minister Strahl. "It is the Government's intention that marketing choice for Western Canada's barley growers - including an option to continue to sell to the Canadian Wheat Board - will be reality by August 1 of this year."

For the results and more information on marketing choice, please visit
www.agr.gc.ca/cwb.******************************

For Immediate Release March 28, 2007

Agriculture and Food
FLAWED PROCESS SKEWS WHEAT BOARD PLEBISCITE RESULTS

Saskatchewan's Agriculture Minister said today that his federal counterpart has no mandate to change the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB).

Mark Wartman said federal Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl was repeatedly warned about the need for clarity in the plebiscite on barley marketing, but refused to listen.

"We told the Minister that there would be problems with the results if he followed the process that he did," Wartman said. "And now, we have 45 per cent of producers in Saskatchewan favouring the CWB single desk and less than 13 per cent wanting the CWB out of barley marketing. I can get no clarity from this result. Those choosing the option to have both the CWB and an open market did so for a variety of reasons."

Wartman said he is not surprised by this outcome, given the three option plebiscite design and the inclusion of the impossible "best of both worlds" second option.

"We warned Minister Strahl that this would confuse the issue and we now find ourselves with no clear result," Wartman said.

Wartman added that the plebiscite was designed to produce the result the federal government sought. It was not designed for farmers to have a real say on the marketing systems they support. He posed several questions for Minister Strahl:

1. The federal government's own Task Force noted that it would be
difficult for the CWB to operate in an open market and the CWB yesterday indicated that it could provide no value in an open, multiple-seller market.

What has changed to make this a viable option?

2. Will the Minister pursue a similar approach on supply management, asking producers of those commodities if they want supply management and choice? Will he give them a similar three question plebiscite?

3. Why is Ottawa not prepared to respect the direction provided by the
producer-elected directors of the CWB?

Out of the Mouths of ...Consumers?

This article simply points out to me the lack of disconnect we have with our customers. They want to buy from Canadian farmers. Canadian farmers want to sell to these consumers. Somehow, the stuff is NOT making it to the right market.

The culprits are large retail food chains, government policy or the lack thereof and farmers who imagine their issues and their products will somehow (by osmosis perhaps?) be available or even recognized by the buying public. This disease is endemic in all sectors of agriculture.

Processing capacity disappears, consumers are being hoodwinked and farmers are unable to compete, as Canada spirals into the status of a nation that may not be able to feed herself!-cg

Produce tasty policy we can munch all winter
Mar 16, 2007 04:30 AM
Joe Fiorito

My interest in Canadian food policy begins with breakfast and continues throughout the day. As you also know from previous columns, we are on the verge, as a nation, of developing new food policy.

Oh, momentous occasion.

I went to one of the public consultations a while back. There were many farmers in attendance; also many food processors and crop marketers, and a surplus of farm bureaucrats. But there were no home cooks and no supermarket shoppers.

That's a shame because we are the end users of Canada's agricultural policy.
Oh, I am sure Ag Canada knows that most of us can't take time off work to go to policy development meetings, but if they took us seriously, they would be asking questions up and down the aisles of my local supermarket.

You get what you pay for, I suppose.

I got a ton of mail from two previous columns on this subject. To summarize: We want good Canadian food at a fair price and we want our farmers to make a decent living.

Allow me to pass along some of my own urban observations, and to draw some city-boy conclusions.

Our growing season is short, but a winter-long diet of cabbage is out of the question. We therefore need tender lettuce, ripe tomatoes and sunny fruit; this is our reward for living in darkness half the year; we will always import oranges and kiwi fruit.

But how do we lessen our dependence on foreign growers? And how do we keep our own farmers in business?

Most of us, if given a choice, would happily buy Canadian produce. Oh, turn that on its head: buying Canadian ought not to be a choice, it ought to be the default position.

Alas, the big supermarkets seem to prefer to sign long-term contracts with foreign suppliers, even for foods that keep, like potatoes and garlic and carrots.

Our farmers suffer as a result.

Because we live in a harsh climate, you and I suffer at the table in the winter because perishable foreign produce must be picked before it is ripe so that it can be shipped; food picked before it is ripe does not taste good.

What to do?

It ought to be easy for us to eat well and locally in the summer. We are a smart and nimble people with a network of roads and rail lines. We should have no trouble getting our best seasonal stuff into stores when it is at its freshest.

An aside: Why isn't the last car on the GO train packed with fresh fruit in the summer and the fall?

What about the winter?

The priciest frozen berries and vegetables in my supermarket this past weekend were from Mexico, Chile and China. Do we not know how to freeze food in the land of ice and snow?
A nice woman spoke up at my table during one round of the consultation.

She is a member of the Toronto Food Policy Council. She said, "I have plum tarts in my fridge from when plums were in season." Good for her.

But most working people I know don't have the time – and few have the expertise any more – to put up a dozen tarts and store them for the winter. And yet the woman is onto something.
Our food processors should lock up all the surplus summer plums – not to mention the peaches and the raspberries – and add value by producing exceptionally high quality, reasonably priced frozen tarts, providing us with sunny comfort during our long and ugly winter.

Another woman at my table – she grows asparagus – said, "There were growers throwing away their asparagus last year. We were sending stuff to Michigan for processing." I rest my case.

As for the winter table, if the Dutch can grow the best and sweetest tomatoes in the world in their greenhouses, why on earth can't we do the same here?

Incidentally, I listened to four hours of talk about food policy and I never once heard anyone talk about juiciness and crispness, nor did anyone wax poetical about the sheer pleasure of the taste of the good food grown here.

Make a policy out of pleasure.

And be industrially creative. I rely on a premium brand of pasta, Rustichella D'Abruzzo. Inexplicably, it sells for the same price here as it does in Italy. This is not just wrong, it's wasteful and foolish, and it may be good for my belly but it is bad for the environment.

A modest proposal:

We grow the best wheat in the world; the Italians import our grain by the ton and they sell it back to us as priest-stranglers. Why can't Rustichella D'Abruzzo be enticed to set up a pasta factory here? If Toyota can turn a profit making cars in Ontario ...

Speaking of which:

The corner store went out of fashion when the car gave birth to the supermarket. We need a more efficient network for the distribution of produce throughout the city. Let the big grocers think small. Let them resurrect the corner store.

These are my modest thoughts on food policy.

Joe Fiorito usually appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email:

jfiorito@thestar.ca

So You Really Don't Get It?!??- Part 2

I had to do a bit of looking, but this second Article by Brewster Kneen , is the long article I was referring to in my earlier post. This one is also about the wheat board. As another in-depth look at the whole sorry situation, Mr. Kneen brings his vast historical knowledge about Cargill and the gradual weakening of farmers' power over the last 30 or so years. He stitches together the many seemingly , unconnected events, into something we had all better begin to think about very, very, hard.

Note to Internet Beginners: the blue colour means that is a link to the complete story/article or whatever.-cg

Canadian Government Seeks to Throw Grain Farmers to the Corporate Dogs

Written by Brewster Kneen
Friday, 26 January 2007

“Plans to end the Canadian Wheat Board single desk will be done in conjunction with changes to the Canadian Grain Commission, Canada Grain Act, grain transportation, and variety registration.” --Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl, 6/11/2006

This autumn Canadians have been treated to a crude horse opera starring Chuck Strahl, Minister of Agriculture in what the Prime Minister insists we call “Canada’s New Government."............