After more than six decades as an international voice of farmer interests, the Paris-based International Federation of Agricultural Producers has collapsed.
Canadian farm representatives with strong ties to IFAP say the organization was a victim of dysfunctional leadership and financial problems.
“They had some accountability and governance issues,” says Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA) president Ron Bonnett, who was an IFAP executive committee member.
Jack Wilkinson, a former CFA president who served six years as IFAP president, said the death of the organization was shocking.
“It was a very big disappointment for a lot of us.”
Wilkinson, whose term as IFAP president ended in 2008, thought the organization was healthy and had reached an unprecedented level of credibility.
“It was in pretty good shape,” he said in an interview from his northern Ontario farm.
“I worked pretty well full-time as president for six years and I think IFAP had gained a position as the go-to farm organization when groups like the World Bank, the United Nations, IMF (International Monetary Fund) and FAO (United Nationals Food and Agriculture Organization) were discussing food policy and wanted a farmer view.”
He said with food issues, food prices and world hunger increasingly on the international political agenda, a credible farmer voice is more important than ever.
When Wilkinson stepped down at a federation meeting in Warsaw, Poland in 2008, delegates made history by electing the first developing country president in its then-63-year history – Ajay Vashee from Zambia.
Wilkinson said the organization began to spiral toward insolvency when a Dutch organization failed to honour a promise to reimburse IFAP for the costs of some development projects.
Vashee’s leadership style also became part of the problem, he said
“Organizations that wanted to help would set meetings and he would not show up and that is not the way to work with partners,” he said.
“He often considered advice a challenge to his authority.”
In late March in Brussels, Belgium, representatives from a small group of countries will meet to try to create something out of the IFAP ashes – a World Farmers’ Platform that would try to represent farmer issues on a reduced scale at international levels.
Canada will be one of the countries represented through Bonnett and the CFA has budgeted $28,000 this year toward the attempt at creating a new international farmers’ voice.
The CFA was one of IFAP’s biggest supporters, contributing $84,000 in annual dues.
When Wilkinson was president, the Canadian government also chipped in to pay many of his travel expenses.
IFAP was created in 1946 as a way to speak for farmers during post-war reconstruction.
Four Canadian farm leaders including Wilkinson and former CFA president Glenn Flaten led the organization as president for 15 years.
Two of IFAP’s five bureaucratic leaders were Canadian, the first and the last. David King served as secretary general for 22 years until it collapsed.
IFAP had member organizations from 79 countries when it folded.
CFA executive director Brigid Rivoire said during the federation’s recent annual meeting in Ottawa that IFAP’s demise should be a warning to farmers not to assume that long-established organizations like CFA or IFAP are secure.
“It is a reminder to never take this organization for granted,” she said.
