A farm advocacy group fears the United Grain Growers-Agricore merger will mean that farmers will lose one of the few strong advocates they had.
“We’re losing a farmers’ co-operative,” said Ed Scarlett, executive director of Alberta’s Wild Rose Agricultural Producers.
“It may jeopardize (Agricore’s) membership in the Canadian Federation of Agriculture.”
Scarlett said he worried the new company would back away from the role of farmers’ advocate because it may be hard to reconcile the views of former Agricore and UGG members.
Neil Silver, Agricore’s chair, said his company has already limited its public advocacy for farmers.
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“Years and years ago we saw ourselves very much as a policy organization and had the clout and maybe the expectation of our farmers to take those positions,” said Silver.
But the Crow Benefit rail transportation debate divided the membership, which he said affected the business.
“If you were speaking out on one side, you were alienating the other side,” said Silver.
“We learned the lesson that farmers had their own opinions and that they would speak, so we’ve retracted somewhat from doing that as much as we used to.”
Now the merged company will probably concentrate on grain handling issues rather than general farmer concerns.
“I don’t think we’ll take as many provocative positions as we used to,” said Silver. “The positions that we will champion will be very focused on the business.”
