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Organic
There are four primary options for wheat and barley farmers to market their organic grain through the Canadian Wheat Board system.
- Sell to a Canadian mill or company dealing in organics.
- Sell through a broker, who arranges the sale to the end user or distributor.
- Find your own market, make the sale directly to a buyer or processor of organic products (by doing a Producer Direct Sale with the CWB.)
- Sell the grain into the CWB pooling system as conventional grain.
In deciding how to sell your organic grain, there are some general advantages and disadvantages to the various options. Option one has the major advantage of simplicity and reliability. Larger companies are bonded and licensed by the Canadian Grain Commission (CGC), are reliable, often arrange transportation, do the exporting, and will handle any transactions with the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB). On the other hand, one may be able to find a higher paying customer by looking for export markets oneself, or by going through a broker. The major disadvantage to options two and three would be risk and complexity. Finding the buyer, negotiating a price, and arranging customs brokering, transportation, and taking the risk on payment is more involved. Some brokers may not be licensed grain dealers, which makes them a higher business risk.
Obviously the last option—selling on the conventional market—would be the least appealing, as the loss of premium available for hard-earned organic status is given up. There may be cases, however, where your crop does not meet the quality specifications of organic buyers, where supply exceeds demand, or where your cash flow requirements make this an acceptable action.
If the grain is feed quality, it can be sold domestically as organic feed grain without going through the CWB system. When making an export sale of organic feed, one must still go through the Producer Direct Sale.