The first question was on multinationals. My first question on multinationals is this. Is this a swear word? Is it such a bad thing that the multinationals are coming and buying our grain?
The Australian Wheat Board lost their export monopoly and the next day the barley price jumped. Instead of having one guy buying their grain, they had four or five companies bidding on it.
So what's wrong with having all these companies bidding for your grain?
I can give you examples of what the prices are in Montana, to what the Wheat Board's pool return outlooks are, or even their fixed price. If the Wheat Board is doing such a good job with the PRO, the PRO really has not been higher than the fixed price since it's come in, on average. It might have been a few times, but to my memory it's never been higher. So why is the fixed price--that's the market price you can get that day on the market--higher than the pooling price? It really never is.
It's not only that, it's the grading. If I take my wheat to the States I can get a much better grade for the same wheat. I'll get it graded here in Canada, I'll take those samples, and I'll go. It will be number four or five here, sometimes feed, and it's a number one in Montana. It's not necessarily dark northern spring, where you get the nice colour, but the colour isn't as important to them. Not only are you seeing maybe a 30¢ or 40¢ premium on the same grade, you're also seeing an extra dollar per bushel on the better grade. A dollar a bushel, $1.50, or even 50¢ a bushel can mean the difference between quitting farming or continuing farming, because 50¢ is huge.