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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Racy CWB ad draws criticism

By: Staff Writer

Posted: 01/31/2013 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

.Jeff McIntosh / The Canadian Press The controversial ad is seen in the Alberta Farmer. (CP)

SASKATOON -- The Canadian Wheat Board is standing by an advertisement that has lassoed controversy.

The ad features a 1969 print called Hi-Ho, Silver, which shows a young woman in a cowboy hat and skirt straddling a fence. The caption says: "Still on the fence?" and encourages farmers to choose the wheat board for marketing grain.

But the National Farmers Union is questioning what an image of a long-legged woman straddling a fence has to do with selling grain.

Joan Brady, who heads the women's branch of the farmers union, says the image is inappropriate.

"To me, I really didn't appreciate first of all, the image that it gave to rural women or women on the farm," Brady said in a phone interview from Manitoulin Island, Ont.

"Secondly ... if I was involved in a western wheat farm, I would be helping to make that decision to purchase contracts with the Canadian board and that would turn me off pretty much very quickly because it dismissed me as a farm operator."

Dayna Spiring, the CWB's chief strategy officer, said the ad, which started running in early January, is meant to be edgy, and they stand by it.

-- The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 31, 2013 A3

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