Wheat Organizations Want an Open Border

Wheat Organizations Want an Open Border

I’m KayDee Gilkey with the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report.

Signaling a desire for more market efficiency, the boards of directors of U.S. Wheat Associates (USW) and the National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG) passed a resolution at their recent meetings in D.C. calling for an open border with Canada that provides reciprocal bilateral wheat trade. ??

Under a December 2011 law, which still faces some legal challenges, the Canadian Wheat Board will lose its grain marketing monopoly Aug. 1, allowing western Canadian farmers to sell their wheat and barley in the open market. ??The United States is routinely Canada's top wheat export market, but Canada's open market changes could affect the ways wheat moves into the United States.??Gordon Stoner, a Montana wheat farmer who serves as the head of the Wheat organization’s Joint International Trade Policy Committee shares what the resolution entails. ??

Stoner: “At this point with the end of the monopoly, Canadian grain will likely come across the border. We asked that the same privilege be extended to U.S. farmers, that U.S. wheat be able to flow North.”??

Stoner said some key issues must be resolved before U.S. farmers could sell their wheat to cash markets in Canada, such as Canada’s narrow wheat class variety eligibility lists that do not allow most U.S. varieties to be marketed in the country as top grade milling wheat.

I’m KayDee Gilkey with the Northwest Farm and Ranch report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.?

For an audio report from Stoner on discussions at the Joint International Trade Policy Committee meeting Jan. 28, click here (http://bit.ly/yYLfb3)