ATLANTA, Ga. – The U.S. wheat industry is one step closer to speaking with a single voice.
The three major producer-supported national wheat groups agreed last week to carry on discussions aimed at merging into one.
Backers of the plan say a merger would create a more powerful and influential lobby group for U.S. wheat growers, one better able to affect government policy in areas like farm supports, international trade, environmental regulation and research.
“Legislators tell us we are a strong voice, but we could be stronger,” said Tommy Womack, outgoing president of the National Association of Wheat Growers.
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“Sometimes we’re not all on the same page and you don’t want to send mixed signals and mixed messages.”
NAWG is the Washington-based national federation of the state-based voluntary membership grower associations. It lobbies the federal government for favourable programs and policies, focusing most of its efforts on domestic issues.
The two other organizations involved in the merger are more trade oriented.
U.S. Wheat Associates, a trade development group with overseas offices, works with customers to promote sales of U.S. wheat, while the Wheat Export Trade Education Committee focuses on lobbying for trade policies that benefit wheat growers.
Both are funded by mandatory farmer checkoffs collected by state wheat commissions.
A special committee was established to wrap up the merger discussions, which have been under way for more than a year. It is to present a detailed proposal to the three organizations no later than July 2005.
However, some growers attending last week’s wheat industry conference said they want it to happen much sooner than that.
“This has been maddeningly slow,” said Lochiel Edwards, president of the Montana Grain Growers Association. “Some people don’t want this to happen and I’m afraid they’ll stretch it out to June 2005 and hope it falls apart.”
All three organizations held board meetings during last week’s conference to discuss the proposal and each passed an identical resolution setting up the new committee.
Aside from those public discussions, the merger proposal dominated hallway and coffee break conversations during the four days of meetings.
While it was hard to find any outright opposition, some growers and industry officials were less enthusiastic than others.
Alan Lee, chair of USWA, said some members of his organization wanted to be assured that merging with NAWG won’t affect USWA’s ability to get millions of dollars in matching market development funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In fact, a USDA official appearing at the meeting warned the organizations to make sure the merger is carried out in such a way as to ensure that doesn’t become an issue.
Because it is funded by mandatory checkoff money, USWA is more flush with funds than the voluntary membership-based NAWG, which has also led to some concerns among USWA board members.
“Many of us felt there were not enough firewalls in the original proposals to maintain the required autonomy of the funds,” Lee said. “That has been the concern of a lot of states that are very reliant on exports.”
NAWG member David Cleavinger from Texas said it’s important that any new merged organization recognize that its strength comes from its members, not necessarily dollars.
“The wheat grower organizations ought to be the strongest organization in this, because we’ve got the numbers,” he said.
While Lee said the main reason for a merger would be to save money by eliminating overlaps in personnel and operations among the three groups, Edwards rejected the idea that financial considerations were the priority. He said the point of the merger must be to provide more effective delivery of services to farmers.
“The overriding motivation here is that domestic policy and trade promotion have become so intertwined that we can’t avoid going forward with some sort of plan to consolidate,” said the Montana farmer. “But it’s difficult for some people to move. There’s always fear of change.”
