Canada's Conservative government will focus on removing the Canadian Wheat Board's monopoly on barley exports before tackling the agency's wheat monopoly, Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl said on Friday.
"We're going to talk about barley, we're going to have a plebiscite on barley, and I hope we're going to have action on barley all quickly next year," Strahl told Reuters in an interview. "We'll let that market evolve," he said. "I have no plans for wheat at this time."
The CWB holds a monopoly on sales of wheat, durum and barley from the Canadian Prairies to millers, maltsters and export markets. The agency is one of the world's largest grain marketers, with revenues of C$3.7 billion ($3.3 billion) for the year ended July 31, 2005.
Barley accounts for the smallest portion of the agency's business. Canadian farmers sell most of their barley to the domestic livestock market. Farmers grew 12.3 million tonnes of barley in 2004, but the wheat board handled only 2.25 million tonnes of the crop that year, shipping it to maltsters in Canada, China and the United States, and to feed barley users in the Middle East and Japan.
Elected in January, the Conservative minority government vowed to end the board's monopoly to give farmers more choice in grain marketing. CWB officials say the agency cannot survive without the monopoly.
A task force charged with developing a plan to end the monopoly said on Monday the government should pass legislation early in 2007 to open the market in 2008. But Strahl said on Tuesday he will start by giving farmers a vote on the barley monopoly.
The government has advertised for an independent firm to manage the vote, to be held by March, Strahl said. But he said he has not yet decided who will be eligible to vote, whether votes will be "weighted" by size of farm and what question will be asked - factors that farm groups and the wheat board say can skew the outcome.
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