BY HOWARD BROWN
ROSETOWN, Saskatchewan - Western Canadian barley producers have voted by a decisive 62.9 percent majority in favor of retaining the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) as exclusive marketing agent for malting and export barley. The vote shows that among small- and medium-sized producers, the board marketing system is seen as providing significant protection from the profit-gouging of the private grain trade.

Out of 77,437 farmers eligible to vote, 58,042 mailed in ballots - a turnout of nearly 75 percent, reflecting the intensity of debate on this issue over the past few months.

In response to the aggressive campaign of the private grain trade and the lobby groups for large farmers, about 37 per cent voted for an end to the board's jurisdiction over barley in favor of sales through the "open market." Since the mid-l970s, successive capitalist governments have sought to fatten corporate agriculture's profits through chipping away at the wheat board's authority.

"I'm very pleased," said Nettie Wiebe, president of the National Farmers Union (NFU), which campaigned in support of the board. Describing the victory as "a landslide," Wiebe called on board opponents to respect the plebiscite's outcome and let up in their drive against the CWB.

But there's no sign that Wiebe's call will be heeded by the anti-CWB forces, who are presenting the vote's results as a sign of the growing strength of their campaign.

"I don't think this is a grain issue. I don't think this is a barley issue. I think this is an issue about basic individual rights," said Buck Spencer of the Western Barley Growers Association. In a second blow to wheat board opponents, a few days later, a federal court judge ruled against a legal challenge to the board system by the Barley Growers, the Alberta Barley Commission, and a number of individual farmers.

Spencer, like other board opponents, complained that farmers were not provided with the ballot option of voluntarily selling through the CWB. "I think about 85 percent of the farmers would be in favor of a dual market," he said.

Ted Allan, president of the United Grain Growers elevator company, said the vote confirmed his company's belief most farmers support a voluntary CWB. The vote had not resolved the barley marketing question, Allan argued.

Dual marketing is "just another way of destroying the board," countered Eric Upshall, minister of agriculture in Saskatchewan's New Democratic Party government, which supported a pro-board vote in the plebiscite. Under the current marketing setup, the CWB is sole marketer of barley for malting and export, as well as for wheat. The returns from board sales are pooled and shared among farmers on the basis of their deliveries. A voluntary wheat board operating in a "dual market" would permit large farmers and grain traders to cherry-pick more lucrative markets, diminishing the returns from the pool account distributed among producers.

The late-March Western Canada hearings of the House of Commons agriculture committee provided a forum for the ongoing debate, with legislation now before Parliament that would significantly undermine the wheat board. Among other measures, the Liberal government bill would enable the CWB to purchase grain on a cash basis outside the pooling system.

Most individual farmers who showed up at the hearings supported the board, the weekly Western Producer reported. In fact, at the Saskatoon hearing, the National Farmers Union was accused by a Reform MP of stacking the hearing.

At the Calgary hearings, Conservative provincial agriculture minister Walter Paszkowski threatened that Alberta would opt out of the wheat board's jurisdiction if further measures were not introduced by Ottawa to weaken the board. Representing anti-wheat board activist Tom Jackson, Victoria lawyer Doug Christie complained that Ottawa passes laws to allow women to have abortions but won't allow farmers to sell their own wheat. Christie is best known for his courtroom defense of anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers James Keegstra and Ernst Zundel.

Meanwhile, newspaper ads placed by the right-wing Canadian Farmers for Justice claim the group has signed up 425 farmers for a convoy of grain trucks to cross the Canada- U.S. border to defy the CWB's jurisdiction over wheat and barley.

Howard Brown is a grain farmer in Rosetown, Saskatchewan.  
 
 
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