Canadian Wheat Board History

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Since the Canadian Wheat Board’s introduction early in the 20th century, it has been present on the world grain market, best known for its monopoly on the wheat market in Canada and influence on the world’s grain market. Its success during the few decades after its birth helped farmers stay on their feet. However as time went on many were unimpressed with the CWB’s tight hold on the wheat market. The Canadian Wheat Board was successful in its time and place but is nonetheless an old expired relic, one that did not keep up with the times. The Canadian Wheat Board originated as an act to regulate the sale of grain in Western Canada during WWI wartime efforts and previous year’s crop failures. After WWI, this first version and the foundation…show more content…
With all these new methods and technologies available at the fingertips of the average farmer, farming has never been easier. The 300-acre farms of the earlier 20th century farmers was outdated, many farms now being 3000-acre, 1-man operations, no longer small, family run farms of fathers and sons. More land meant more acres, which in turn meant more crop production. With better yielding crops developing each year, better fertilizers being produced and a demand on the world market for continuous cropping, as to supply the growing world population with food, many farmers dropped the practice of summer fallowing fields to grow continuous crops on all of their land. This means that every acre of land available was used every season, year after year with no rest for the land between crops. This method gain allowed farmers to grow more each season so that they could gain more profit. In practice this concept works great, farmers produce more than enough product to supply the demands of the world’s market, but once again, the CWB did not adapt to these new methods, holding on to the idea of…show more content…
If the CWB overpaid the first payment, they would have to keep the second payment to make up for the losses. On top of having to wait until well into the next crop season to receive pay, sometimes waiting up to 18 months, while new expenses were piling up, farmers, if applicable, would receive the second payment far into the next season. This cycle left farmers falling behind on payments, until they were usually a season behind, never getting ahead. This became a big issue for these large operations because they were not able to sell the amount of grain that they needed to pay for their expenses. Since these farmers produced a substantial amount of grain per season and they could not sell more than the quota given to them, these large operations had to sit on their expenses such as fuel, fertilizer and chemical until the CWB could take on enough of their grain to make the transportation expenses worthwhile. Many farmers, when approached by the CWB with a quota available would say that they were not ready to sell. They then waited until the CWB returned with a higher quota that would make the expenses of elevator fees and transportation worthwhile for the farmer. This whole process became even more difficult with the removal of the Crowsnest Freight Rate, more commonly known as the Crow Rate, which many
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