Evidence of meeting #24 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was farm.
A recording is available from Parliament.
As an Individual
Lentils have been the backbone of our farm for years. This year...chickpeas, lentils. We're going to grow canola for cashflow; it's not going to make a lot of money. Our cereals are going to create a loss. We have to grow them for rotation.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
So you're growing cereals for rotation. That's the only reason you're doing it.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Of course, we don't have the feedlot industry. Well, you do, I guess, in Swift Current, and you're fairly close by--
As an Individual
Fairly close by. We're probably about 90 miles to the nearest feedlot, I guess. Moose Jaw might be a little closer.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
You both touched on research. I'll go back to the canola. If you didn't have GMO canola, Matt, what do think the canola yields would be like?
As an Individual
Well, they wouldn't be very good, maybe in the 20 to 25.... There was a program a few years ago. The idea was to grow 30 bushels of canola. This is when I was still a younger fellow. And if you did achieve that yield of 30 bushels an acre, you were supposed to hang a flag by your field. So one of the neighbours came by and said, “Glen, your flag is hanging at half mast.” And Dad said, “Yes, I know. I only got 15 bushels.” So unless we get 40 bushels an acre of canola, we feel it's a failure. Thanks to biotechnology, that's where we're at.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
So it would be fair to say, then, that if it wasn't for the feedlots being next door or the new genetics in canola, your farm would probably be operating at a loss right now.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
David, I think you would say the same thing. If you didn't have lentils and chickpeas--again, two new crops that were developed in Saskatchewan, or exploited in Saskatchewan, I might say--your operation probably wouldn't be there either.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Why do we allow this to continue? We seem to sit there and grow other crops and ignore the elephant in the room, and that's wheat. Is that totally because of the Canadian Wheat Board?
As an Individual
I'd have to say it's a big part of it for our farm. The marketplace is the marketplace.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Let me maybe go at it from a different angle. You grow durum. Correct?
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
If you could have sold 100% of your durum two years ago, or three years ago, how would that have impacted your bottom line?
As an Individual
It would have helped hugely. Storage just whittles away at the price even more. You have to sit on it. I think each farmer needs the choice, to make that decision to sell it. The guy who yields 30 might need a higher price to break even. The guy who gets a 50-bushel crop could be happier with a lower price and still make a margin.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
And of course you pay for the storage cost, whether you store it on your farm or whether its stored in a grain elevator. Through the pool accounts you're paying for that storage also.
As an Individual
Because of the relationships we're building through chickpeas, lentils, and other crops, we have opportunities at our doorstep to sell our cereal crops. It almost becomes an issue of our customers overseas thinking it must be a language barrier. They want to buy our durum, and we tell them we can't sell it to them. They say they'll give us more, and we say we can't sell it to them. They really don't understand that we basically can't sell them our durum, our wheat, and our barley. We have the contacts and everything is in place, but we have this institution standing in the way.
We need to get closer to the consumer. It's probably a common thread that you have heard from producers. If anything is common, it's that we want to get closer to the consumer. We can't do that when we have this institution standing in between. If you are talking to producers all across Canada, why are we talking about a Canadian Wheat Board institution that is only in western Canada? It's a monopoly. It either should be for the betterment of all Canadians and all Canadian producers or it shouldn't be there at all. It shouldn't be an issue that a producer in Ontario is free to sell his grain to whomever he chooses and I can't because I happen to be within a designated area.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
We know the Americans monitor these meetings, Larry. Matt kind of indicated that crop insurance is a subsidy. It's not. It's a premium-based program. I wouldn't want crop insurance to be considered a subsidy.
We have been challenged on it before. It's premium-based. Its intent over time is to be actuarially sound. I know there's a federal-provincial program that supports it. I think we all agree 100%. It's a little different from province to province. But we don't consider it a subsidy, nor do we under various trade agreements. I just want that on the record.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
That point is well taken.
I'd like to thank our witnesses again for being here. We apologize for the interruption, but it was beyond our control.
We hope the report will come out in the upcoming weeks. I encourage you to look at it. It will be on a website somewhere.
We thank you for your participation.
The meeting is adjourned until Wednesday.