Barley farmers in Western Canada will be presented with three voting options in the upcoming mail-in plebiscite that will help the federal government decide whether to keep the Canadian Wheat Board's marketing monopoly on barley.
The voting options were announced earlier this week by federal Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl in Red Deer, Alberta.
Farmers can vote to maintain the current single-desk system—in which case the board keeps its monopoly on barley exports, eliminate the board's role in marketing barley, or keep the board as one of the participants in a free market, an option advocated by the government.
"Canada's New Government believes Western grain farmers should have the choice on how they market their grain while preserving a strong, viable, yet voluntary Wheat Board," Strahl said in a statement.
Critics of the Tory plan to abolish the board's monopoly, including CWB board chair Ken Ritter, were quick to condemn Strahl for including the third option since they argue an open market would make the board ineffective.
"This question is not, in our opinion, intended to accurately gauge farmers' feelings on the issue of barley marketing since it perpetuates the belief that the CWB can be effective without its single desk," Ritter said in a news release.
Terry Pugh, executive secretary of National Farmers Union, says the fact that Canadian Wheat Board does not have any facilities makes it unable to compete with major grain companies.
"Right now with the single-desk [system], these elevator companies, these other grain companies, act as agents for the Canadian Wheat Board," says Pugh. "Without any facility, how are people actually going to deliver to the Canadian Wheat board?"
Pugh calls the third option a "fantasy option", and says Strahl should have used an either-or question similar to the one used by the Manitoba provincial government in their mainly symbolic plebiscite last week, in which farmers voiced strong support for the single-desk system.
The promise to eliminate the wheat board's monopoly in the wheat and barley market was one of the points the Conservatives campaigned on before coming to power.
The Canadian Wheat Board was established in 1935 in response to the lowering grain prices during the Great Depression, and has become the sole marketing agency for Western Canadian wheat and barley produced for export or human consumption in Canada.
Critics of the single-desk system say that farmers should be free to choose how they sell their products and believe farmers are able to negotiate better prices on their own in many cases. Supporters of the board however argue that the single-desk system is the best way to keep prices stable and to survive in the highly competitive international market.
A report released by the CWB earlier in January claimed that the economic value of the agency is $1.6 billion annually, and called the board a "major economic force" in Canada.
Jeff Nielsen, president of the Western Barley Growers Association, who is a farmer himself, thinks many things have changed since the time CWB was created. He believes it would be better to have a choice-market environment.
"Today, a farmer is a modern business man," says Nielsen.
"The amount of time and money and equipment we have invested in our operations is phenomenal. The amount of information we have and that we can access is incredible; with the internet, with phones, constantly you're in communication either with the end user or with the buyer, finding out what they want."
Nielsen says he would want to keep the board as one of the options, but thinks farmers should be able to market their product how they see fit.
"If we're too restricted, then there is no growth, there is no development. We need value added brought back to western Canada, and with marketing choice we'll get that," says Nielsen.
The barley plebiscite will be held from January 31 to March 6, and the results will be announced in mid-March.
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