Buckdog

I don't understand the reasoning of those who are involved in agriculture and agrifood in Ottawa.

They want to financially wean tobacco farmers to other crops but won't come up with the real money that such a transformation requires.
Many of these farmers are in Diane Finley's riding. Remember her?

Meanwhile down the highway and a riding or two distant, the conservatives are pouring everything they can afford into the by-election of a weak candidate for Guelph.

Hell, the farmers are in shouting distance of Guelph and the newspapers and radio have overlapping coverage areas.

So now who's wasting the taxpayers' dollars and why is anyone letting them keep at it like drunken sailors?

Is there a curse put on people with a "z" in their surname?

"However, from time to time, the real situation gets a bit of media attention and the fact that Canadian farmers are better off WITH the Wheat Board becomes evident"

If western farmers are so much better off with the Wheat Board then why force them with jail time to sell to the Wheat Board?

If the Wheat Bard is so great then any farmer not selling his wheat to the board would be crazy and bankrupt in no time.

Sorry dog your argument doesn't hold any water. The fact that over a third of prairie farmers want out of the Wheat Board is proof that the Wheat Board is not the panacea you make out to be.

Deno

Deno that is an idiotic argument. A recent SGI survey found that over a third of rural residents refuse to wear their seat belts. When caught in defiance of the law, they are ticketed. There is a small handful of Canadian farmers who live near the US border who feel that occasionally, when the daily spot price for wheat is a few cents higher across the line, they want to bolt across to ND or Mont and make a sale.

The overwhelming numbers of farmers who want the Board to remain as is .. far outways the few dissidents who try to make martyrs of themselves in defiance of the law.

Deno: I am not an expert in these matters, but you make an interesting argument. However, assuming you're right, and the third of farmers want out of the CWB, you're implying that 2/3 of farmers do want to stay in the CWB.

The question is, is the benefit that those 2/3 of farmers(ie, the small producers, people with family farms, like my g/f's parents) greater than the benefit that the 1/3 of the farmers(sometimes bigger producers, those with deep connections to large agribusiness corporations) forego? Since there are more of them, it wouldn't have to be a large benefit in order for this situation to make economic sense.

I don't know the answer to that question, but it needs to be posed. If anyone has any information on that question I'd love to hear it.