Bunge Ltd. welcomes Ottawa’s decision to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board and is preparing to jump into Prairie grain handling, according to a story in the July 20 Globe and Mail.
In an interview while visiting Winnipeg, Bunge chief executive Alberto Weisser told the Globe that “The concept (of a board) is brilliant, but it’s how it is managed. And still the most efficient system is a free market, a complete free market.”
While Bunge is active in Prairie canola crushing and operates a large export elevator in Quebec City, it does not have significant handling facilities in Western Canada.
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As the harvest in southern Alberta presses on, a broker said that is one of the factors pulling feed prices lower in the region. Darcy Haley, vice-president of Ag Value Brokers in Lethbridge, added that lower cattle numbers in feedlots, plentiful amounts of grass for cattle to graze and a lacklustre export market also weighed on feed prices.
That may change after the end of the CWB monopoly. It “will open up an opportunity for us in the West,” Soren Schroder, who runs Bunge’s North American division told the Globe. “It will allow companies like us to get in the chain from the farms to the overseas customers.”
The company is already making plans. “We are absolutely planning to be part of it,” he said.
