Organic Farmers Ask CWB Directors to Support
Farmers not CWB Jobs
(July 16, 2004 - OSPG)
The Canadian Wheat
Board (CWB) does not market organic grain, but their organic buy-back
policy is very injurious to the Prairie organic industry with extortion
costs sometimes even exceeding $2 per bushel. Not only
does the CWB take thousands of dollars from organic sales, but excessive
buy-back costs often stop sales. Prairie sales are
missed while Canadian mills import “CWB free” organic wheat from the
United States
, and in 2003, forward contracts of Prairie organic wheat ended up filled
with
U.S. wheat.
“The CWB knows their
indefensible fleecing of organic farmers creates a negative public image
for them.” says OSPG member John Husband, an organic
farmer at Wawota, Saskatchewan, “Because of this, we expect changes, but
based on past experience, we anticipate the self-serving CWB management
staff to concoct some cosmetic scheme designed to improve their image, and
possibly even increase CWB jobs, without relinquishing their grip on
organic farmers.”
“We know the CWB
staff has a vested interest in not losing their control over organic
farmers, but it is way past time for the CWB Directors to do the right
thing and put farmer’s interests ahead of jobs at the CWB.”
Bill Rees, an OSPG organic farmer at Stockholm, Saskatchewan explains the simple
solution: “We want the CWB to grant licences to Western organic farmers
the same as they do for Eastern organic farmers under the same national
legislation, and the same as they already do for selected other grains
grown in the designated area such as seed grain.”
“They falsely told
organic farmers for years that the Act wouldn’t allow organic grain out
of the monopoly, and only
when pressed by members of Parliament did they
finally admit that their own
policy and not the CWB legislation
forces organic farmers into their
costly buy-backs.”
“Everyone except the
CWB decision makers knows that organic farmers should not be forced into a
monopoly that doesn’t even market organic grain.” continues
Rees, “Goodale’s 1998 survey strongly showed that
the majority of farmers thought organic grain should out of the monopoly,
and this was long before last year’s CWB marketing debacle when the CWB
bled thousands of dollars from organic farmers into their deficit pool
account, which only helped Canadian taxpayers and the CWB employees.”
“Essentially, we are
only asking the CWB to follow their Act and treat western and eastern
organic farmers equally under the same national legislation.” |
