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Chair's point of view
Message from Ken Ritter, Chair, board of directors
The CWB is all about giving farmers choice.
Choice means having the right and the power to make decisions for yourself that are in the best interest of your own farm and your own family.
The CWB exists as the only seller of wheat, durum and barley for human consumption and export out of Western Canada because farmers like me and like many of those who are represented around the CWB's board table believe that this is the best way for us to compete in the international grain marketplace.
In this international marketplace, we are competing with farmers from nations where huge amounts of public money are being used to prop up wheat production. We are competing with farmers who don't have to overcome the huge distances that separate us from many of our markets. We are competing with farmers who live and produce in far more hospitable climates than our own.
As business people, we believe that the only way to compete effectively in these circumstances is to out-perform our competition on quality, reliability and customer service. But having the best product is only part of the business equation: you then need some way to get paid extra for that superior product and that's where the CWB's power as the sole supplier of high quality Prairie grain comes in.
As farmers, we have chosen to take the CWB approach to marketing because it works. If it didn't work, we'd change it. Indeed, through their elected directors, the farmers of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the Peace River Region of B.C. have the power to do so. The CWB's board of directors can initiate changes to the CWB's mandate and how it sells grain on farmers' behalf. As long as farmers in Alberta and elsewhere keep electing a majority of directors who want single desk selling, it'll stay. When a majority of Alberta farmers don't think that this is the best way to sell their wheat, durum and barley, they'll elect representatives who will work to get the system changed.
As farmers, we believe that this is how it should be. The CWB is ours. It belongs to the farmers of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the B.C. Peace and no one else. We pay the bills at the CWB, we call the shots and we are the ones who stand to lose if the CWB's powers are weakened in any way. So, we don't want anyone else telling us how we should or should not sell our grain.