Western Producer reporter Sean Pratt will file reports from the conference in Mexico next week.
A good year for the canola industry is being capped off by a convention in Mexico, an event organizers insist is all about business, not pleasure.
“Mexico is a major customer for Canadian canola,” said Canola Council of Canada communications director Dave Wilkins.
The country ranks as one of Canada’s top three buyers of canola seed, importing $179 million worth of product during the 2002-03 crop year.
Holding the conference in Puerto Vallarta allows exporters to conduct meetings with Mexican crushers, processors and shippers in an attempt to increase business.
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“It’s basically to show the Mexicans how important we feel they are as a customer,” said Wilkins.
Japan is consistently the top importer of Canadian canola seed, with China and Mexico regularly vying for second spot on the list. Mexican crushers bought 455,000 tonnes of canola in 2002-03. A few years earlier, sales topped 837,000 tonnes.
“They have the potential to be a million metric tonne market and that’s what we’re going after,” said Wilkins.
But hosting a farm conference in an exotic locale can be a risky public relations move. The Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association learned that when it held its 2000 annual convention at the same Mexican resort.
The decision garnered a front-page column in a national newspaper.
Rival farm organizations like the National Farmers Union took the Wheat Growers to task for holding its annual meeting in Mexico at a time when producers back home were pleading with the federal government for $1.3 billion in emergency farm aid. Many growers felt the location of the meeting sent the wrong message to the tax-paying public.
“They used it as an opportunity to attack us,” said Kevin Archibald, who was then the wheat growers president.
Despite the controversy, the trip proved a success, generating substantial sponsorship dollars.
“We raised more money to do work on members’ behalf out of that convention than any other convention that had ever been put on.”
Archibald said the meeting, which attracted 400 members and their spouses, did not have an adverse effect on aid negotiations that eventually resulted in a $500 million government payout. And the event wasn’t the extravagant expense critics claimed it was.
“It was cheaper to go to Mexico than it was to Winnipeg,” he said.
According to the Canola Council, the Puerto Vallarta conference will cost the same as previous annual meetings held in Ottawa and Vancouver.
It is expected to attract 235 participants, an attendance figure that is slightly down from the recent Can-adian-based conventions.
