Harry – With the Western Canadian Wheat Growers and, of course, I along with a lot of you people, so long were focused on removing the monopoly of the Canadian Wheat Board, and this isn’t to be a negative question, but what continues to be the place of the Wheat Growers of Western Canada?

 

Jim – Well, you know, there are always new issues come up. We had the same kind of discussion around our board at the time that the Wheat Board was disbanded. We kind of weren’t too sure where our place was, and there’s never a shortage to come up. Right now, we’re working on the carbon tax issues and fighting for farmers as best we can on that front to say here we are. We’re the group that’s been worried about the environment for our entire lives. We’re the ones that are thinking carbon, especially with the changes in cropping and whatnot, and practices, and technology, and tillage.

 

We’re putting carbon back in the ground, yet it’s the flavor of the day for the politicians. It’s a new way for them to tax. I mean, you can sugarcoat it. You can put the lipstick on the pig, as they say, but this is nothing more than a brand new tax scheme. We’re fighting tooth and nail to prevent that to happen.

Harry – Since the demise of the monopoly and the single desk selling system, and as the Act says, and as Gerry Ritz, the former Minister of Agriculture, this whole idea of freedom to market, it’s, to me at least, it’s really played out maybe even better in most cases than what we had envisioned?

Jim – Yeah, I think so. There are a few hiccups getting started. And then we had the rail issues in 2013, but guys are getting into it. Guys are starting to do a little bit of forward contracting some more. You know, the ability to literally deliver your entire crop off, the combine if you so desire. I think that’s helping for cash flow. I think it’s putting a bit of squeeze on some of the companies. I think there are some growing pains in the companies themselves to contracting amounts and grains and that, that they have no possible way that they can take delivery within that contract month.

 

That’s another issue we’re looking at is companies tie up your grain. You got a payment, so you agree to sell in, say, December and that’s when your payment’s due, and you’re waiting in February, you still haven’t delivered the grain. That’s certainly something, I think, that has to be looked at further within the contract specs is there needs to be some kind of accountability so we don’t have these guys running around and grabbing all this grain and getting it all under contract, and then, have no intentions of moving it for a few months.

Harry – I guess the individual farmer can catch on pretty quickly because he looks after his own farm, but when all those individual farmers come together into a company that wasn’t necessarily ready or didn’t even know what it would mean once the Wheat Board was gone. I guess, for them, that’s where the growing pains really have set in.

Jim – I think it’s better for some and not for others. It’s people’s, how comfortable they are with risk. Moving forward from there, I think that’s the thing is you use the tools, whether it’s forward pricing or a basis contract or something like that, as farmers get more familiar with that. I mean, we had 75 years of not having to do that. It was all done for you, and so this is a steep learning curve for some people.

Harry – You remember Rolf Penner, who at one time was a director for Manitoba on the Wheat Growers?