The Saskatchewan Canola Growers Association has voted unanimously to merge with the Saskatchewan Canola Development Commission.
The two groups began talks last year when the executive director of the grower association took another job.
Negotiations culminated in a vote taken last week at the association’s annual meeting authorizing the board to continue merger discussions and begin a trial year of joint operations.
“At this meeting in 2012, the Saskatchewan Canola Growers Association would cease,” association president Stan Jeeves told growers attending the Crop Production Week meeting.
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Jeeves said the timing was right for an amalgamation of the province’s two canola groups.
Membership in the grower association has fallen to about 300 growers from more than 1,000.
But Jeeves said the association was financially stable.
“We’re not doing this because the organization is bankrupt,” he said.
The only hesitation for Jeeves was wasting the talent he had gathered in the form of his eight fellow board members.
“I didn’t want to disband and have this real good group of talented young people disappear into the woodwork,” he said.
Those concerns were alleviated when the commission agreed to add two new board positions and a six-member policy advisory committee comprising the former grower association board.
Jeeves said the restructured commission will be a stronger entity than either of its components.
Wayne Bacon, past chair of the Saskatchewan Canola Development Commission, said growers had trouble differentiating between the two groups.
Many didn’t know that the grower group focused on policy while the commission’s job was to administer the check-off funds.
“I think there will be a lot less confusion and I think we’re going to be a lot stronger organization. They will be one voice speaking,” he said.
The new board positions and policy committee will be created once the commission gets approval for the merger from the Agriculture Council of Saskatchewan Inc., a group that administers levy collection for eight commodity groups. He expects that approval in February.
Bacon said the former grower association board members will be able to devote more of their time to policy development rather than trying to sell memberships.
Growers will no longer have to pay a $100 annual membership fee in addition to a 75 cent per tonne levy.
One new member of the group said he was “caught off guard” by how fast things were moving.
“I would have thought there would have been more discussion with the membership,” he said.
Jeeves said it would have been preferable to have held membership meetings throughout the province but they didn’t have the executive director or the resources.
Another voting member who identified himself as a director of the Western Canadian Barley Growers Association said he fears that group will also dissolve due to declining membership.
“With the age of the present directors, when they’re gone, I don’t really see the organization keeping on,” he said.
If that happens, there would be no voice for barley growers in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
