SASKATOON – There is an inescapable irony in some of the rhetoric surrounding the development of farmer-owned terminals.
Seventy or 80 years ago, prairie farmers trying to escape the grip of the line elevator companies set up the grain co-operatives. Now, dissatisfaction with those co-ops is helping produce another breed of elevator.
Little guy versus big guy
“Farmers didn’t trust the private line elevator companies, the big companies, and they went into business for themselves,” said University of Saskatchewan agriculture economist Gary Storey.
“Is that same thing coming around now? Even though farmers own their own elevator companies, don’t they trust the big giant co-ops with respect to marketing their grain?”
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Clearly there are differences. The new terminals aren’t co-operatives and the profit motive is part of the attraction for shareholders.
They welcome investment from anyone who wants to buy shares and in some cases are forming partnerships with privately-owned grain companies, who were the enemy 70 years ago.
But some observers, like National Farmers Union provincial co-ordinator Don Kelsey, still see strong parallels to the 1920s.
“It’s a new type of co-operativism,” he said. “People have become a little disenchanted with the way they’ve seen the co-op movement go,” so they’re willing to work together and dig into their pockets to bring about change.
Kelsey said he knows of NFU members who strongly subscribe to the co-operative philosophy and orderly marketing, yet are involved in the new terminal associations.
United Grain Growers president Ted Allen is reluctant to ascribe any ideological motives to the farmers involved in inland terminals. They’re business-oriented and less interested in politics than many existing grain companies.
“These people are not driven by ideology, they’re driven by economics,” he said.
