They want to be free to divide up growers and buy from the weakest seller.

With over 20,000 growers and a handful of genuine buyers, they will get all the competition they want amongst the growers.

And if traders still cannot get low enough prices from Australian growers then they will forsake us and buy from growers in USA and EC.

After all USA and EC growers can always afford to undercut Australian growers because they receive "free subsidy money" from their Governments to make up the shortfall!

That is why Australian growers continue to show strong support for the Single Desk.

But the Australian Government seems to care little about the growers' feelings.

Maybe when our once mighty wheat industry is destroyed and Australia has to import wheat every year they will see the light.

However, let us not overlook the facts.

In most years world wheat production well and truly exceeds consumption.

In that picture Australian production exceeds domestic usage by up to 20 million tonnes.

It then goes onto a world market with up to 125 million tonnes available for export.

Of that quantity USA and EC exports combined are often about 50- 60 million tonnes.

Growers in USA & EC are paid assistance money by their Governments which enables them sell their wheat below the cost of production and still make a profit.

Therefore the buying competition John Begg speaks of is also able to choose the cheaper USA & EC wheat ahead of Australian wheat.

So even with extra buyers within Australia I do not believe for one minute that traders would want to pay a higher price for our wheat than for USA & EC wheat.

I for one will take an option to avoid AWB.

Their aim was to get a good return for shareholders and to sell the wheat to happy customers being offered undercut prices in a way that allowed them to still retain bonus incentives.

We put over 5,000 tonnes in the 2005 AWB pools and only got paid around $2/tonne more than our 80% advance and loan.

The 80% was on an estimated pool return that the WEA conservatively estimated that was around $30-$40/tonne less than it should have been to start with.

Farmers want standard business protection that will remove the exemption from ACCC/Trade Practises Act and the financial services act which will reduce the harvest of farmers in the future.

Just make sure the National Pools are totally separated from any cash grain trading activities.

Unfortunately that was not the case in 2005.

It is also worth drawing attention to the fact that under Single Desk arrangements, growers are just as free to access futures/derivatives markets as under deregulation.

They also have access to containerised exports and the growing domestic market.

Finally, at the risk of repeating my point and being irritating, there is still no factual evidence of how deregulation is going to make your wheat returns better Julie.

Simply maintaining the rage with AWB is hardly a rational economic path towards higher wheat income?

Look at the ten pins fall when the US bowl us over one pin at a time.

We as growers are pretty naive to believe that the system will protect us.

We have as growers a product that they need to service their customers.

How much of a slice of the grain industry pie we get in our pocket diminishes every time we give over power to the merchants, storage and handlers, and the keepers of the keys to the shipping of grain.