“We now have a Conservative majority government and one of the questions on the minds of prairie grain farmers is the status of single-desk selling for the Canadian Wheat Board. We have been told by the Harper government repeatedly that they believe prairie farmers should decide on this issue. We hope they will honour that commitment.” said Terry Boehm, president, NFU, of the single-desk system, which sees all Canadian wheat sold through the CWB. “Farmers have consistently elected pro-single-desk directors to the Board of the CWB and in the last round of director elections this past fall farmers again spoke and elected four out of five directors who were clearly supporting the single desk.”
“Support for the Board crosses all political boundaries and parties. We have something unique that developed out of a long struggle for farmers to market their grain from a position of strength, rather than accepting the price offered by a few multinational grain companies, which dominate the world’s grain trade,” concluded Boehm.
The CWB markets over 20-million tonnes of grain on the world market on behalf of western Canadian farmers. Last year the CWB’s sales program was valued at $5.2 billion.
