Less than a year after saying no, oat growers in Manitoba are again being asked whether they want to pay a voluntary checkoff on commercially marketed oats.
Last April growers in the province voted 48.9 percent in favour of a checkoff, well short of the 60 percent support required by the Manitoba Farm Products Marketing Council for the proposal to be approved.
Undeterred, the Prairie Oat Growers Association has launched another campaign to introduce a 50 cents per tonne refundable checkoff, which works out to 77 cents a bushel.
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Money raised from the checkoff, estimated to be around $600,000 annually if implemented Prairie-wide, would be used to pay for research, market development, promotion and extension.
The association has held eight information meetings across the province to promote the plan and officials say there has been strong support from producers in attendance.
“The straw votes have been pretty substantially positive,” said POGA director Bob Anderson of Dugald, Man.
“I think I’m more inclined to be optimistic this time around.”
The association has held more meetings, distributed more information and tried to talk to more growers about the proposal than was the case a year ago.
The association is also telling farmers who don’t want to pay a checkoff that since it is refundable, they should simply not vote rather than vote no.
“That way your neighbours who might want to have a checkoff won’t be denied,” Anderson said.
The association is hoping ballots will be sent out in late February or early March, although no date has yet been set.
Ballots will be sent to anyone who has grown oats in one of the past three years, as determined by crop insurance records. Last year 5,982 ballots were distributed.
POGA’s goal is to have a prairie-wide checkoff, but efforts are more advanced in Manitoba than the other two provinces, neither of which requires a formal vote.
In Saskatchewan, the association’s task is to convince the province’s Agri-Food Council that there is widespread support for a checkoff among the province’s oat producers. Public meetings held in the province a year ago attracted few farmers.
POGA president Al Loyns said the main stumbling block in Saskatchewan is that the association lacks a reliable list of oat growers.
Loyns said the association has no directors in Alberta, but the provincial government supports the check-off idea.
