The Dominion - Winnipeg

Bye, Bye, Wheat Board?

Tim McSorley — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 05:27:59 +0000

Small farmers raise concern as Conservatives prepare to cut board's monopoly

WINNIPEG—Stephen Harper’s Conservative government is preparing to pass legislation to end the Canadian Wheat Board’s monopoly on exports and milling of prairie-grown wheat and barley.

“The Wheat Board was brought into place, basically, so that grain buyers wouldn’t take advantage of farmers,” explained Jo-Lene Gardiner of Manitoba Agriculture, Food, and Rural Initiatives, which is based out of Pilot Mound, MB.

From it's offices in Winnipeg, the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) markets Canadian grain to world markets and for domestic consumption.

Opinions among grain farmers are divided on the issue. As it stands, grain farmers in western Canada can only sell wheat and barley to the CWB. The Wheat Board therefore decides which varieties of wheat and barley farmers can grow, buys grain from farmers and markets it to buyers domestically and around the world.

One benefit to farmers under the current system is that payment of grain is meted out over a year period, and the CWB attempts to provide farmers with the best price possible for their grain by paying them the average price of grain on the world market over the year.

“If when you sell your wheat, [the] price is five dollars a bushel, and by the time the end of the year came along the price was nine dollars a bushel, under the new system you’re stuck with five dollars, end of story,” said Jan McIntyre, a mixed cattle and grain farmer near Cartwright, MB. “Under the Wheat Board, you would get the average price, which would be the difference between your five dollars and whatever the final average was.”

Currently, the CWB provides all grain farmers with the same price for their grain, "no matter if you have 100 bushels or 100,000,” said Gardiner. “If you have No. 1 wheat at 14 per cent protein, you would get the same price [per bushel] as the next guy. Everybody is treated equally under the system.”

“[The Wheat Board] takes a certain percentage [of wheat] right off the combine right to their elevator,” Derek Marvin told The Dominion. Marvin is a 31-year-old elementary school teacher in Winnipeg, but during the summer months leading up to harvest, he returns to his family’s farm in the rural municipality of Elton, MB, to help his father run their 2,300-acre operation.

“Without it, farmers are going to have to bring it back home in their own storage bins on the farm, and so you’re going to have to buy new bins and find more storage and find more space for it all," he said. "A grain bin holds 40,000 bushels, and that’ll cost you $100,000. That’s like buying a house!”

Opponents of the CWB’s monopoly argue that farmers ought to have the right to market their own grain, and decide which varieties to grow and when.

“An open market will increase the number of buyers bidding on our wheat and barley,” federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said told reporters in October, according to the Globe & Mail. “Unlike what some people may claim, the sky will not fall in an open market. Instead, the sky will be the limit.”

“I think it’s going to be a positive change,” said Barry Critcher, who has been farming grain for 28 years. Critcher farms 3,200 acres between Dawson Creek and Fort St. John, BC, one of British Columbia’s most productive grain growing regions. “I think it’s going to be positive to my farm, because I can sell my grain to who I want, when I want, and I can do the things I want to do on my farm without having to worry about letting somebody else do the marketing for me."

The prairie provinces have been experiencing a rural demographic shift since at least the 1970s, which kicked into high gear since the 1980s. Rural populations are diminishing, small towns are dying, and economic control over food systems is held by an increasingly smaller number of players, with money flowing out of small communities and into corporate headquarters, such as those of agribusiness giants Vittera and Cargill, in urban centers.

How will the changes to the CWB affect this demographic and economic transition?

“I think it will perpetuate the problem,” said Marvin, whose family has been farming grain in Elton, MB area for three generations. “It’s already to the point where rarely can a small family farm exist on its own. It needs other income. When I think of all the farms around my community, all the farmers who were farming smaller acreages than us have dropped off. They’ve sold a few acres to us, a few to the Hutterites, a few to some other neighbors, because it’s just too tough to keep up.”

While it is impossible at this juncture to confidently predict what effects the changes to the Canadian Wheat Board will have on farmers and rural communities, there is no doubt that grain farmers and farming communities in western Canada will have to adapt to the new economic reality—and fast.

Most expect that the proposed legislation will go through; if it does, as of August 1, 2012, the Canadian Wheat Board as we know it today will be gone.

Sheldon Birnie is a writer, editor, and musician living in Winnipeg.

Golden Wheat

Propagandhi Scores Against War

Moira Peters — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 05:33:19 +0000

Torture, Terror, and Don Cherry face the music in the band's sixth release

Propagandhi, Winnipeg’s “progressive thrash” heroes, have just released a new album. Supporting Caste is twelve and a half songs of political passion and metal-tinged post-punk. Singer Chris Hannah discusses the issues inspiring their sixth full-length album.

Erin Empey: Do you think that Propagandhi has evolved since the release of Potemkin City Limits? What’s new with Supporting Caste?

Chris Hannah: I'd like to think so! At the very least, we added The Beave on second guitar to the line-up, so that's new, and in my opinion has added a lot more depth, dimension and atmosphere to our customary sonic pummelings.

Also, Jord has more gray hair on this record. I’m not sure if that comes through on the recording though.

Since you guys decided to fold your record label last year, how has working with Smallman been compared to G7 Welcoming Committee?

Well, considering we're in a time where the racket of selling recordings to people has been essentially eviscerated, it's been pretty good! We've known them for years, they understand where we're coming from and they live within choking distance. These are important factors.

G7 operated using Participatory Economics (parecon), where business decisions were made democratically and profits were shared equally among members. Based on your experience, do you think it could be applied on a larger scale?

After a decade of experience in a parecon-inspired enterprise that was subject to all the human frailties and palace intrigues that every single gathering of more than two people throughout history has always endured, I still can't come up with any good reason why people shouldn't endeavor to embrace parecon's core values of solidarity, equity, diversity and self-management in their workplaces. It makes sense and it is right.

The track “Human(e) Meat” opens with a howling Sandor Katz about to be cannibalized. Who is Katz and why do you want to eat him?

Sandor Katz is someone who talks and writes about food. He has a book called "the Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved" that is actually worth reading until you hit the absurd and utterly embarrassing chapter where he tries to rationalize torturing, maiming, killing and mutilating sentient animals for his personal enjoyment. It is the type of embarrassing new-age hippy nonsense that sets serious debate about food politics and human ethics back a decade every time it rears its hippy head.

We simply used his logic, step by step, and daydreamed me rationalizing torturing, maiming, killing and mutilating him for my personal enjoyment. Which is of course also absurd, which was the point of the illustration.

Apparently he has no sense of humour (or of his own irony for that matter) and is very upset about it. Poor persecuted meat eaters! Will they never be free from the tyrannical oppression of vegetarians?

In “Dear Coaches Corner” you lament Don Cherry using his platform to promote militarism. Do you think that there are ugly politics in hockey culture beyond Don Cherry's routines?

For sure. Cherry is just the emptiest and hence, the loudest barrel. The culture of professional hockey is essentially a propaganda wing of the western elite and their geo-political objectives. Why else would Jim Balsillie, head cocknose of the company that makes the Blackberry, appear on Hockey Night in Canada thanking Canadian troops in Afghanistan for "defending our lifestyle?" Wait, I thought it was about liberating Afghan women? Whoops!

During the pre-release of Supporting Caste, proceeds from downloads went to Partners in Health, Sea Shepherd Society and Peta2. Why are these groups important to you?

Partners in Health provides a preferential option for the poor in health care. At its root, their mission is both medical and moral. It is based on solidarity, rather than charity alone. When their patients are ill and have no access to care, their team of health professionals, scholars, and activists will do whatever it takes to make them well – just as one would do if a member of one's own family were ill. They stand with their patients, some of the poorest and sickest victims of poverty and violence, in their struggle for equity and social justice.

People for the ethical treatment of animals is probably best known as the most frequently criticized and denounced activist organization on the planet. Some of the criticisms are legitimate, like those that lament campaigns that play on and foster or perpetuate sexist stereotypes in the service of drawing attention to the mundane terrors visited upon animals in human societies. Still, Peta2 (the youth wing of its parent organization) is currently the most effective potential gateway drug to an abolitionist animal liberation perspective that is not merely anti-animal exploitation, but anti-capitalist, anti-sexist and connects human affairs with non-human animal affairs.

Less than one percent of the planet's living creatures live on land, so you'll have to excuse Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Society for his bluntness when declaring the Sea Shepherds Society's "single-mindedness" for defending the oceans from human encroachment and exploitation. We humans constitute less than 0.1% of life on earth and act like we are entitled to the rest of it. Humans continue to terrorize and destroy the largest-brained sentient mammals in the history of earth and enlist the services of PR firms to cloak the brutality in vestments of scientific research. The Sea Shepherd intends to stop such stupidity.

Do you ever feel awkward about speaking on behalf of groups you are not a part of, such as Aboriginals, refugees or women? With an influential band, is there a danger of overshadowing the voices of those you are trying to help?

Not if you're a good listener. My obligation as I see it is to take the information that marginalized groups have articulated to me about the realities they face in a fucked up system and relay it to my people in a way that has resonance. And what can I say? My people happen to be largely white guys in NHL starter caps. Hey, we need information too, eh!

When are you playing Vancouver?

I refuse to answer such a politically-loaded question!

Erin Empey is a Vancouver based journalist.

propaghandi