The story of Pig, Owl and why there is so much wheat at the farm.

Once upon a time on the Animal Farm, the animals noticed that creatures on the neighbouring farms had a much greater choice of crops to eat than they did. The Animal Farm was organized by Dicky the Pig, who had long ago decided that he would create a company called Seedstra to grow the crops, and had placed the laughing Kookaburras in charge.

The Kookas had decided Seedstra would grow wheat – only wheat – because it was easy and cheap and that was what they had always grown. So wheat was what the animals were forced to eat.

But they noticed that other farms had wheat plus maize, cotton, barley and many other exotic foods, some of which made them run fast. They even used some of these crops in ways never imagined before, such as to make comfortable cotton shorts. “We want our food to be faster, too,” they told Seedstra. “And we want to try shorts.”

Seedstra told them wheat was fast enough that they could weave wheat stalks into shorts, but they were scratchy and really wouldn’t do.

The animals asked their neighbours, “How did you get so much choice?”

“Competition,” said the neighbours.

“We want competition and choice,” the animals demanded of Dicky the Pig. “Give us competitors!” 

“Okay,” said Dicky, “I’ll let other animals start growing crops but only in the bottom paddock by the creek that floods. And Seedstra will be in charge of selling, transporting, storing and distributing everyone’s seed. And they will be in charge of the herbicide and pesticide, because we can’t trust anyone else with such a responsibility".

“Furthermore, I’ve decided that we must privatize Seedstra so it can compete efficiently with these new market entrants,” Dicky said.

“But that doesn’t make sense,” said the wily Fox “Seedstra will be motivated to boost its share price by locking in monopoly premiums. It will try to suffocating downstream competition, which will mean endless regulation and no one will be the winner.”

“Psst,” said Dicky to Fox. “I’ll need lots of merchant banking advice from someone smart like you before the sale, and I’ll pay fat fees.”

“Ohhhh,” said the Fox and he turned to the other animals. “Dicky’s idea is simply terrific and really is the only way to go.”

“Oh no, competition can’t possibly work, we’ll all starve,” said the Seedstra Kookaburras. “Hahahahhaha!”

The other animals shrugged and went along with it. Although they were rather nervous and asked Dicky who would make sure Seedstra didn’t misuse their market power. “I’ll make Felsy the Wise Owl the supervisor,” said Dicky.

“Oh no, he’s mean to us and he’ll make it impossible for us to compete, the whole system will collapse and wheat will be more expensive,” said the Kookaburras. “Hahahahaha!”

But Dicky just winked at them and went ahead with his plan.

Soon the horses had established their own little businesses and were growing all sorts of new crops. Seedstra told them they could use the old wheelbarrow – the one with holes and a flat tyre – and store their crops in the second silo.

They soon discovered that the second silo was the one where all the rats lived. When animals came to the seed store hoping to buy their high-energy seeds, Seedstra often told the customers that the competitors’ seeds had mysteriously gone missing, or were on the wrong shelf, or gave any number of strange reasons why they couldn’t be sold. But no one went away empty handed. Seedstra always was able to sell them some Seedstra wheat.

Sometimes Seedstra mixed up the pesticide with herbicide and killed all the crops. “Terribly sorry!” the Kookas would say. “Hahahaha!”

Oh dear, said Dicky, when the horses told him what was going on. “Run off and tell Felsy the Owl.”

Felsy would sit in his tree and listen to the complaints, watch all this going on and shake his head but when it came to do anything to punish Seedstra, would say to the horses, “I’m sorry, but when Dicky put me in this tree, he clipped my wings so I could not fly down to peck Seedstra on the head. All I can do is yell and hope someone listens.”

One by one the horses began to give up trying to grow seeds. “Never mind,” said the Kookas, “We’ll give you some Seedstra wheat wholesale and you can say it’s yours and sell it. That’s REAL competition. Hahahahaha!”

One day Wise Felsy the Owl could not stand it any longer and said to Dicky: “This situation is intolerable. How do you expect the animals to have a choice of seeds when the horses can’t get their crops to the customers, and even if they do, Seedstra takes away most of the money they earn by charging them fat fees? There is only one solution. You have to forget about this silly idea of selling Seedstra until you fix up this mess.

“You need to make someone responsible for the silo and delivering the seeds for everyone, and someone else responsible for running the shop.

“The mill should be owned by someone else, and if anyone is not able to do a good enough job, the horses should be encouraged to invest in new infrastructure to compete with the old.

“It’s no good having Seedstra growing their own seeds AND being in charge of storing and delivering everyone else’s seeds, too. What do you expect to happen? Of course they are going to favor their seeds over everyone else’s!

“You have to make sure all the seed growers have the same advantages Seedstra now has, and then see whether the animals get a fair choice of seeds. And you must do it immediately; this has been going on for too long. The animals are suffering and the horses are all getting too skinny, turning into dogs and dying. Soon the only grower left will be Seedstra and then we’ll be back where we started!”

Dicky the Pig only snored, for he had fallen fast asleep. “Hahahahaha,” said the Kookaburras.