Single desk

A single desk is a monopoly marketer and buyer of a product with multiple suppliers. They were common in markets for agricultural produce.

Single-desk marketing in Australia

Wheat

In Australia, the single desk was the monopoly marketing of wheat by the Australian Wheat Board (1939–1999) and its privatised successor, AWB (International) Limited (1999–2008). In this situation, returns from growers were pooled together nationally and the prices averaged by the Board, which covered both domestic and international sales until 1989, when it focused exclusively on exports. In its last year, this was limited further to just bulk exports.[1]

Momentum for change to the export marketing arrangements built up over time, following:

  • the National Competition Policy Review of the Wheat Marketing Act 1989 (2000), which found there was no clear, credible, and unambiguous evidence that the current arrangements for the marketing of export wheat were of net benefit to the Australian community
  • the successful deregulation of the export of other grains
  • increasing grower dissatisfaction with the performance of the single desk, notably in Western Australia
  • the Inquiry into Certain Australian Companies in Relation to the UN Oil-For-Food Programme (2006).

In 1999 Wheat Export Authority was created following passing of amendments to the Wheat Marketing Act 1989.

In October 2007 Wheat Exports Australia was replaced with the Export Wheat Commission.

In July 2008 the Export Wheat Commission was replaced by Wheat Exports Australia.

Other products

Until 2016, Western Australia had a monopoly purchaser of ware potatoes, the Potato Marketing Corporation of Western Australia. Other single desks existed in Australia, such as Queensland Sugar Limited, the Australian Barley Board, and dairy single desks in each state, among others.

Single-desk marketing in Canada

The Canadian Wheat Board was Canada's monopoly marketer of wheat and barley grown in the prairie provinces. Its monopoly was removed in 2011, effective August 2012.[2]

gollark: You could actually analyze, roughly, demand for items via krist logs, except KristQL is down.
gollark: Preprogram your shop with the prices and locations of other shops (or I guess have it communicate with others over some defined interface), and when it runs low have it try and buy more stock from elsewhere and send drones to collect.
gollark: Hmm. Drones can fly around other people's claims *and* suck up items...
gollark: Make a shop which buys and sells items in one more unified system, and which adjusts buy/sell prices automatically based on how much it has. Maybe it could even communicate with other people's stores to figure out demand for some products.
gollark: Now sell them cheaper than Wojbie (Woodjbie?) does.

See also
  • Wheat pool

References
  1. "Wheat Export Marketing Amendment Bill 2012", Parliament of Australia. Accessed 12 November 2012
  2. André Magnan (August 3, 2012). "Wheat farmers lose a tool in the winds of change". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 8 September 2012.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.