Friday, October 7, 2011

Pasta processing plant coming to Regina

CTV Saskatchewan - Pasta processing plant coming to Regina - CTV News

It never fails to amaze me how quickly the free market moves to fill in gaps when needless regulations are removed. It never failed to amaze me how the province(s) that produce the best milling durum in the world didn't have a processing plant to turn that durum into pasta.

There was a movement about a decade or more ago to put a pasta plant in southern Saskatchewan. The movement even went so far as to get thousands of farmers to pay a couple hundred dollars each to become members of a New Generation co-op. That movement had met with a pasta producer across the line in North Dakota and had formed agreements to build a plant on the prairies.

That movement was shut down by the Wheat Board for no other reason than to protect the poor farmers from themselves and those greedy industrialists. I'm happy that at the end of the day, common sense won out and some of that durum is being processed where it's produced. Let's hope this is the start of many more announcements like this.

3 comments:

  1. That is excellent news. I could never understand why the Wheat Board would not allow prairie farmers to process their own wheat. They had to sell it to the Wheat Board and then buy it back again at a higher price.

    Of course eastern wheat farmers were not under the heavy foot of the monopoly, so they had a huge advantage. Another case of Liberal policy profiting the east and stomping down on the west, where we still remember the NEP.

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  2. At about that same time there was a move to build a pasta plant in Lethbridge, AB. A brewery had shut down and they wanted to convert it to a pasta plant. Memberships were sold for mega bucks, but project was stopped. One reason, some female councillor got all upset that there would be truck loads of grain going thru her city, with enviro problems etc. At one meeting she ranted on, and finally a farmer asked,were you upset when the brewery closed. Of course, he then asked, were you aware that truckloads of barley was needed to operate it. She was really floored, did not know barley made beer. She tried to argue the point. Needless to say, she was not re-elected. Plant went to the states, farmers lost their money.
    Should mention she was an envirowacko, also.

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  3. we have a pasta producer in Warman Sask. Delloy Pasta. www.delloypasta.ca

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