A new report suggests what farmers are getting now is much less than what they were getting proportionally before the loss of the CWB.

The Canadian Wheat Board Alliance has released the research paper written by Laura Larsen a PhD Candidate in History from the University of Saskatchewan.

The report is “An evaluation of the present situation for Western Canadian grain farmers within a historical context.”

Larsen says she focused on two areas: the implementation of orderly marketing and single desk selling for grain on the prairies and secondly an analysis of how the present grain handling, transportation and marketing system changed since the CWB was ended in 2012.

She says the single desk orderly marketing system gave individual farmers access to collective market power adding that  

She says what farmers are getting now is much less than what they were getting proportionally before the loss of the CWB:

"The current system is not working for farmers, as they receive about 40-60 per cent of the world price instead of the 90 per cent they used to receive. Serious study and consideration must be given to the issue of a lack of system-wide logistic oversight for grain movement, and solutions to the problems that farmers are facing needs to take a comprehensive approach with the context of western Canada's agricultural history," Larsen said.

The Canadian Wheat Board Alliance has met with government officials to call for a return to the establishment of orderly marketing of grain in western Canada.

"We probably have a bit of a hiatus,"said former CWB Director Kyle Korneychuk. "There going to have to see what sort of lobbying goes forward. Obviously, we're going to be lobbying hard. We can argue about numbers until the cows come home, but at the end of the day, I think the question really need to be, 'Should farmers have any say in how their grain is marketing?' And we went from having a lot of say, to nothing. People know it's a problem, now we're trying to figure out what's the way to rectify it."

Korneychuk says he’d like to see a plebiscite on the issue as farmers never had the right to exercise their vote on the issue before the CWB was taken away.

There’s some concern being raised that a return to the single desk monopoly could be problematic with some of our trade agreements, the CWBA has said they don’t see a concern.

To view the report check out the Canadian Wheat Board Alliance website.