The changing of the guard at the Flax Council of Canada should be seamless as a Hill replaces a Hall.
“Just cross out a letter on the (business) card,” said council chair Terry James.
William Hill replaces retiring Barry Hall as president of the council effective March 1.
“With Will Hill, we’ve got a very experienced individual who knows international grain markets and is very aware of production issues that western Canadian producers have had in the past,” said James.
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Hill has 30 years of experience in the Canadian grain industry, including senior management positions as president of ICE Futures Canada, senior vice-president of Saskatchewan Wheat Pool’s grain group and managing director of merchandising and transportation at United Grain Growers.
James praised Hall for his 18 years of service with the council, including the last 11 as president.
He called him a “steady statesman” who helped develop a food market for what had been an exclusively industrial crop and credited him for elevating public awareness of flax’s nutritional properties.
He was also pleased with Hall’s handling of the Triffid case, when an unwanted genetically modified trait that contaminated the supply system sent the industry into a tailspin in 2009.
“He was the captain of the ship and did a good job in steering us to being able to maintain some semblance of a European marketplace,” said James.
Hall called the Triffid case the biggest disappointment of his career because it wiped out a burgeoning and high-value human consumption market for the crop.
“It’s not the way that I would have hoped to have left the industry,” said the 70-year-old.
Before Triffid was found in shipments, 20 percent of Canadian flax sold to Europe went to food markets. That high-margin container business evaporated overnight.
Hall agreed with James that his main contribution to the industry was getting flax recognized in the United States and offshore markets for its nutritional qualities. The crop is now used to produce omega 3 eggs and pork.
He’s also proud of the work the council did in convincing the federal government to fund a project with Cibus Global to create a non-GM herbicide tolerant flax that should boost yields. That work could lead to future traits such as modified fatty acid profiles.
Hall thinks the Cibus project could be one of the keys to flax’s survival.
“The crop will go through several tough years here, but long-term I think you’re going to see a tremendous resurgence.”
James said finding ways to make flax more agronomically competitive
with other crops will be at the top of Hill’s to-do list along with finding a resolution to the Triffid issue.
Hall said the first thing he is going to do in retirement is take a trip to Europe, but this time it will have nothing to do with trying to establish a low level GM presence policy.
He’s going to visit his daughter’s family living in the south of France, where he can reflect on his career with the council.
