Though the Wheat Board smooths out some fluctuations, farming has always been an up-and-down business.

ECONOMIST: Canada

Their attachment to the wheat board derives not only from the stable returns it gave them but also from their forefathers' grievances against big grain companies.

ECONOMIST: Free trade finally comes to the Prairies

Last year the Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board, set up to fight the changes, won a suit alleging that the minister of agriculture had broken the law by stripping the board of its monopoly without first holding a plebiscite among farmers.

ECONOMIST: Free trade finally comes to the Prairies

Even so, in contrast to only ten years ago, the firms operating in Kansas City today are largely the same as those trading soft red winter wheat at the Chicago Board of Trade and spring wheat at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange.

ECONOMIST: Grains of truth

Andrew Watts, a wheat farmer and the NFU combinable crops board chairman, said farmers had been hoping for a kind autumn after a poor harvest in 2012, but this had not happened.

BBC: Britain 'running out of wheat' owing to bad weather