The diversity of delegates to a new producer arm of Saskatchewan Wheat Pool reflects reality and ensures representation for all types of farmers, says the executive director of the Western Farm Leadership Co-operative.
Linda Pipke said the FLC will work to improve the business of farming.
“We want to develop leaders interested in finding, understanding and charting new routes to innovation, in seeing new pathways in order to succeed in the long term and understand what the future holds,” she told the co-op’s founding meeting in Regina in mid-December.
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The new organization has 80 delegates from the 16 Sask Pool marketing centres in the three prairie provinces.
The diversity Pipke talks about includes: 60 percent of delegates are new to the pool; their farm size ranges from 1,500 to 8,000 acres; 55 percent of delegates are under age 45; and, three are women.
“It’s helpful to have that kind of diversity, different voices,” Pipke said in an interview.
She is especially pleased with the strong representation from younger farmers.
“That shows some of the succession that’s going to happen.”
The FLC’s mandate is to help farmers become more knowledgeable and profitable.
Wayne Truman, who was named chair during the day-long meeting, said the organization will hold courses and seminars on marketing and agronomics, and take advantage of Sask Pool agrologists to do that.
He said farmers can’t control the weather so they have to look at the things they can manage.
“We do have control of our input dollars,” Truman said, and programs can be tailored so that money isn’t wasted.
Although some have suggested the FLC is a new producer policy or lobby group, its board has not decided what involvement it will have in those areas. It may look toward working with other groups such as Wild Rose Agricultural Producers in Alberta, for example.
“Just think of the opportunity and potential of bringing diverse ag groups together from Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan to work on common objectives,” Pipke said.
Sask Pool funds the FLC, although neither the company nor the co-op would reveal how much money is involved. Each year the co-op will nominate a minimum of four directors to the slate up for election to the company’s board.
“As an autonomous organization with its own identity, its own board and its own membership, the FLC will have the flexibility to act freely, make its own decisions and chart its own course into the future,” said Terry Baker, chair of the pool’s board of directors. “We will create common goals that generate tangible value for producers, the pool and the industry itself.”
Truman added that producers’ affiliation with the pool will help it do business, too, because it will get feedback.
“It’s important those programs and services (offered by companies) are really tailored to what producers need and want,” he said.
Farmers will do business with companies that are interested in helping everyone improve their bottom lines, Truman said.
Truman is a former pool delegate from Redvers, Sask. The board’s vice-chair is Thad Trefiak, a former pool vice-president, from Leross, Sask.
