Culture of Control: Farming With the Shackles of the Canadian Wheat Board

In 1935 the Canadian Wheat Board was established to oversee the marketing, handling, and transportation of Western Canadian grain. Under the CWB's increasingly rigid regulations, farmers in the West were prohibited from responding to free market conditions by setting their own prices and selling their grain when and where they chose. By the 1970s, the "single-desk" system was completely controlled by federal government agencies and had become dysfunctional.

In Culture of Control: Farming with the Shackles of the Canadian Wheat Board, author and grain farmer Ken Motiuk meticulously documents how this system began to take shape in the late 1800s and continued until the Canadian Wheat Board was officially abolished by an Act of Parliament on August 1, 2012. From 1977 until 2015, when the last remnants of the CWB were finally dismantled, Motiuk wore many hats in both the farming and political arenas and contributed to the efforts that led to the successful deregulation of the grain industry.

Let me begin by thanking Ken for this insightful accounting of the many trials incurred by Western Canadian farmers foisted on them by the Canadian Wheat Board. These pages are an accurate, decades-long analysis of a government policy that had outlived its usefulness.
Excerpted from the Foreword by the Hon. Gerry Ritz Minister of Agriculture 2007-2015

Author: Ken Motiuk
Publisher: FriesenPress
Published: 04/04/2025
Pages: 356
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.41lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.97d
ISBN: 9781038317537

About the Author
Motiuk, Ken: - Ken Motiuk is a proud third-generation grain farmer and activist who has played significant roles in both government and numerous agricultural organizations. Now semi-retired, Ken and his wife, Wendy, spend winters at their home in Arizona and return every year to their 13,000-acre farm in Mundare, Alberta, for spring planting and autumn harvesting and to assist the family's fourth- and fifth-generation farmers with bookkeeping, financing, and planning. Culture of Control: Farming with the Shackles of the Canadian Wheat Board is Ken Motiuk's first book.