I must be the only Canadian farmer who wants the wheat price to fall.

Why? Last year I grew 500t of AC Vista low protein soft white wheat for feed/ethanol use.

In September, when doing a Canadian Wheat Board Basis Contract, I put a cross against the wrong type.

That simple mistake will cost me, were I to buy that contract out now, over £22,000.

The Canadian Grain Commission classifies wheat by acronyms under seven types.

Canadian Western Red Spring, Canada’s renowned high protein milling wheat, is CWRS. Our AC Vista is CPSW (Canada Prairie Spring White). I marked it CWSWS (Canada Western Soft White Spring).

The two are similar, but CWSWS has a characteristic pitta bread bakers apparently like.

To compound the issue, CWSWS is only traded in Chicago and CPSW only on the Kansas exchange.

Red flags started to show when enquiries about moving some of this wheat brought the error to light.

Requests for help and advice from the CWB, the organisation which claims to work for farmers, have been singularly unhelpful. It offered no other position except buy-out and then selling into the pool with its lower average returns.

The CWB is clearly focused on its own interests and its own survival above the individual farmer.

It recently stopped any futures contracts for the 2008 crop because of the wild wheat markets, and it persists like an ostrich with its head in the sand with its dressed up “Cash Plus” single desk pool selling of malt barley, while completely ignoring the government’s requests to being party to legislation to free up that market.

So with snow still lying and sub-zero temperatures, Jane and I are off for couple of weeks to warmer climes, like the Grand Canyon, though not to throw myself over the edge.