EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY: A large player in the farm finance field offers opportunities for stimulating work in a rapidly changing environment. Duties range from developing prudent lending policies and promoting farm diversification to overseeing the largest holding of farmland in Canada.
POSITIONS AVAILABLE: chairman of the board (full time); eight board positions (part time).
QUALIFICATIONS: Financial background helpful. Some understanding of the financial needs of farmers essential. Liberal Party membership is NOT a disqualification.
REGINA – Agriculture minister Ralph Goodale is about to change many of the faces at the top of the Farm Credit Corp.
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Last Friday, Jim Hewitt served his last day as chair of the Farm Credit Corp. after seven years on the job.
This week, the 61 year old is back home in Penticton, B.C., savoring the first week of retirement after a career as an accountant, a British Columbia Social Credit MLA and agriculture minister and a senior federal bureaucrat.
It gives Goodale a chance to put his stamp on the Regina-based federal farm lender. In addition to the chair, eight of the 12 board of director’s positions are open.
“I am considering my options,” said Goodale. “I hope to fill those positions before the end of the year.”
Hewitt was appointed to the FCC post in 1987 by the former Conservative government. He remembers the day he visited then-agriculture minister John Wise to talk about the job.
“John looked up from his desk and asked ‘Do you really want the job?'” Hewitt said with a laugh during a recent interview.
At the time, it was a good question.
The FCC was running hundreds of millions of dollars in the red, victim of a generous lending policy and a downturn in the farm economy.
The crown corporation was on its way to seizing more than one million acres of land from farmers who could not pay their debts, most of it in Saskatchewan.
Seven years later, the FCC is operating in the black, it has been given new legislation expanding its ability to lend money to farm diversification projects and it has moved its head offices from Ottawa to Regina.
All this happened during Hewitt’s watch.
“I think the most satisfying thing was seeing us get into the black, earlier than we had expected,” he said.
“The second was the new legislation in 1993 that gave us more decision-making power and more scope.”
Hewitt’s advice to his successor is to remember that agriculture is cyclical. Do not get carried away by upturns, like 1994.
“The corporation has to be able to withstand the inevitable downturns.”
“Be business-like. Be an alternative. Keep the banks honest.”
