No, I'm just here to represent myself.
I'm Boyd Charles, not Charles Boyd. I was asked to appear as a producer of organic grain. I farm in Saskatchewan. We farm 10,000 acres of certified organic ground, and have had a lot to do with the Wheat Board. The main reason I wanted to come was to tell you how the Wheat Board affects at least an individual organic producer in selling his grain.
I quit traditional farming in 1999, and one of the main reasons was to sell my own grain and not have to market it through the Wheat Board. I found out over the last seven or eight years that I actually have more to do with the Wheat Board than I did before.
Not one bushel of organic grain that I've sold since 1999 has actually been traded in Canada, except one sale of feed grain to a local organic chicken place near Winnipeg. So all my grain has been shipped to Europe, the United States, or Japan. I buy back every bushel from the Canadian Wheat Board, and I'm here to talk about this ridiculous buy-back feature that organic farmers have to go through.
For example, I bought back 462 tonnes of feed wheat in February--around 15,000 bushels--to ship to a place in the United States. The contract I signed was for a buy-back of $6.92 a tonne. I don't get the final results until the end of the crop year, so I just got a bill in the mail the other day for $11,000. That is a little over three times what the initial contract said. I don't know anybody who can run a business if you don't have any control over the costs. I can tell stories all day on the buy-backs, but that's just one example.
I just grew a malt variety for an organic maltster in Missouri under contract. It was accepted, and I'm ready to ship 50,000 bushels of malt barley to this organic maltster in Missouri. The trucks are hired, the contract's been signed, and the only thing left to do is buy back the malt barley from the Canadian Wheat Board.
I phoned down for a buy-back and I couldn't believe it. The buy-back on malt barley that day was $2.65 a bushel. That meant I would have had to stroke a cheque to the Canadian Wheat Board for in the neighbourhood of $140,000 if I had bought back my malt barley that day. They said, “Well, you have to figure in the pros”. When I asked what they were she said, “It will get you back down to $56 a tonne”. So it will only cost me $1.20 a bushel to sell my own barley to a maltster in the United States, after I found the market for it and did everything.
What disgusts me so much is that they couldn't even buy the grain if I offered it to them. I can't take it near any of their facilities or it would be contaminated. Organic grain has to be shipped in a certified vessel. So even if I offered them the grain they couldn't buy it, at least in the experiences I've had with them. Anyway, it wouldn't be at the price you'd want to sell it.
This buy-back on barley for $140,000, that's just an estimate. I might get a shock, because you have to run the full crop, which doesn't end until July 31 of next year, and then I'll get a bill in the mail in about October or November with the actual cost of that buy-back. If it's three times what they said it was in my feed week, then it could be as high as $400,000. I mean, you have no idea of what you're doing.
The only thing I can suggest it resembles is if it was the 1920s in Chicago, and I ran a little corner store, and I had to pay protection money to the mafia in order to operate that little store. I'm a farmer in Saskatchewan, and in order to operate that farm of mine I have to pay protection money--or whatever you want to call it--to the Wheat Board so I can operate. I can't deal without them. This is the only example I can come up with.
They have nothing to do with selling my grain. They have nothing to do with transporting my grain. They didn't find the buyer. I have all the expenses of growing it, yet I have to turn over a dollar a bushel to them just for the privilege of their buying my grain and then selling it back to me. If you tell this to an American, he has a really hard time grasping that idea.
That's the first point I'd like to make. If you do nothing else, please get the organic farmers out of the picture. I don't know of one organic farmer who wants to be involved in buy-backs or dealing with the Wheat Board. At least in my case, I'd like to market my own grain. Right now I'm making a deal for flax to Poland, I'm selling a special wheat to Japan, and I'm selling malt barley to the United States--and I don't need any help. I just want somebody to get rid of the red tape, especially the buy-backs.
The other thing I would like to comment on is the vote we were talking about having to decide this matter. I don't know any business that's running that doesn't have an equal vote. I was talking to a fellow on the plane who worked for Shoppers Drug Mart. He just got bought out last year. The company that bought him out bought 52% of the shares. So they controlled Shoppers Drug Mart, because they owned 52% of the shares. They made them lean and clean, and made their money. They sold all their shares, made lots of money, and now they're back to 3%, so they don't have a whole lot to say in Shoppers Drug Mart any more. But at least when they owned 52%, they had a lot to say about Shoppers Drug Mart.
Some 50% of the producers in the Canadian Wheat Board don't market enough grain to matter, yet they have exactly the same amount of say as the person who farms 10,000 acres. My suggestion would be that if you're going to have a vote that matters in the real world, then have one acre equal one share. Therefore, the guy with 10,000 acres and all that money invested in machinery and land would at least have a little more to say than the guy who has his name on a permit book but has never sold a bushel. You have to come up with some kind of decision on who gets to vote, because 38% of the people have never marketed a bushel, and 50%--if you combine them all--marketed 1,200 bushels or something. It's ridiculous that people who don't have anything invested in a company would have that much power.
That's my look at it.
Thank you.