Western Front - March 12, 2007
The Algerian connection
Cyril Doll - March 12, 2007
Acrimony toward the Canadian Wheat Board isn't exclusive to libertarian-leaning farmers who ply their trade in the wheat board's mandated area west of Ontario. The Board's monopolistic powers over western Canadian barley and wheat producers are a source of consternation for international agriculture wonks, too. The U.S. views the board's monopoly and its government-mandated price guarantees as a subsidy, often mentioning its dissolution as a condition for U.S. support of multilateral trade negotiations, such as the World Trade Organization's failed Doha Round. So it was with little surprise that the U.S. Wheat Associates newsletter printed an article bemoaning the merits of the board. What was surprising, was a Dec. 28 news story that the Washington, D.C.-based organization had translated from an Algerian news source.
In the Dec. 27, 2006, edition of Le Point Economique Alg?rie, Mohamed Kacem, director general of the OAIC (the Algerian grain board) is reported to have said that the African country's "trust-based" relationship with the CWB has yielded an economically attractive rapport. "The selling price to Algeria for 400,000 to 500,000 tonnes of wheat a year is carefully studied because it is a preferential price," Kacem is quoted as saying. "The price saves Algeria tens of dollars on every tonne purchased." In other words, the CWB is selling western Canadian wheat to Algeria at below market value.
The wheat board was quick to dismiss the story as nothing more than shoddy translation work. Greg Arason, the newly appointed president and CEO of the CWB, in a letter dated Jan. 30 to U.S. Wheat Associates, took special exception to one paraphrased sentence, translated as the OAIC enjoying "very low prices." To which Alan Tracy, USWA president, succinctly responded that the tone of their article matches the actual translation of the Algerian piece. "Parsing the language of the translation does not change the message that CWB appears to have bought its durum [wheat] market share in Algeria at the expense of western Canadian producers," wrote Tracy.
Having an Algerian wheat buyer champion wheat board prices as a bargain flies in the face of what the CWB claims it does--"market quality products and services to maximize returns to farmers," according to their mandate. This shows the duplicity of the single desk, says a Manitoba agriculture policy analyst. "It's another example of the dichotomy of identities of the board," explains Rolf Penner, a Manitoba wheat grower and senior agriculture policy fellow at Winnipeg's Frontier Centre for Public Policy. "It puts one face on when it's talking to farmers and it puts another face on when it's talking to its customers. Farmers are getting tired of it."
Luckily for those farmers, the Conservative government in Ottawa, which campaigned on dissolving the board's monopoly, is getting tired of it, too.