Viterra has donated $1 million to the Canadian International Grains Institute for its work in promoting Canadian crops worldwide.
“We said we need to support CIGI in a very meaningful way,” said Viterra president and North America chief executive officer Kyle Jeworski.
“We feel that as the leading grain company in Canada we’re the first out and it’s a challenge to others to support a very meaningful organization like CIGI in a meaningful way like we have.”
CIGI plans to use the donation to help fund its expanding role in training foreign and prairie crop sellers and users.
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Viterra will get its name on an existing classroom inside CIGI’s Portage and Main area headquarters.
CIGI had been primarily funded by CWB during the era of the single desk. But in recent years and especially since the death of the CWB monopoly, it has expanded into non-board crops and changed its funding structure to bring in money from farmer organizations and commissions.
CIGI has had to replace CWB funding, and also pay for more training for Canadian grain company staff now working in marketing roles once done by CWB.
CIGI chief executive officer Earl Geddes said the agency has been unable to meet all requests for training and support, and those are lost opportunities to promote Canadian crops.
“When you turn work away you’re not doing something that’s good for the industry,” said Geddes.
“This (contribution) will make sure that we’re not turning away activity with international customers, with growers, with exporters.”
CIGI has also outgrown its current building and needs funding for new facilities.
For years, CIGI seemed destined to move from downtown Winnipeg to a University of Manitoba grain industry cluster site, but Geddes said the organization now intends to stay near the present commercial grain industry nexus at Portage and Main.
“We’ve decided if we’re staying in the City of Winnipeg we want to stay downtown.”
Multiple grain company head offices, organizations like Pulse Canada, the Canola Council of Canada and the new Cereals Canada, and attractions like the new Canadian Museum for Human Rights and the Winnipeg Jets arena make downtown the right place to be to impress foreign visitors.
“That builds that Canadian image that we want to sell all around the world,” said Geddes.
He said CIGI is not yet permanently committed to staying in Winnipeg as it searches for larger facilities, but it would like to stay because the city is the centre of the Canadian grain trade.
“It’s the logical place, so yes, obviously, you’d want to be in the city,” said Geddes.
