For most of the past year, western Canadian farmers have braced for the rush of competition that will follow the end of the Canadian Wheat Board’s 69-year-long monopoly on grain marketing in August.
But whether farmers will win or lose from the transaction depends heavily on who buys the former farm cooperative, which has a commanding 45 percent share of rural elevator storage – the backbone of the supply chain for getting crops from the world’s No. 8 grain grower to global markets.
“There’s a fear on our side that an existing multinational like Cargill that’s already in this country would buy them and take away a lot of competition” among handlers vying for farmers’ grain, said Alberta farmer Lynn Jacobson, president of Wild Rose Agricultural Producers.