TABER, Alta. — Ninety years is a long time for an agricultural commodity group to survive, as Alberta Sugar Beet Growers has done.
It’s also long enough for important documents to be lost in the shuffle of time and paperwork.
Such is the case for the master agreement between the growers and their processor, Lantic Sugar.
The association doesn’t have a copy.
Andrew Llewelyn-Jones, agricultural superintendent for Lantic, said the company has a copy of the agreement in its vault, but it hasn’t yet located it and pulled it out of storage.
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Negotiations on a new sugar beet contract between the association and Lantic were to begin Feb. 20, and the growers have served notice that they intend to get a new master agreement in place.
Association vice-president Lonny James told the group’s Feb. 18 annual general meeting that with no official document as a basis, “the parties are left not knowing exactly what they are agreeing to amend or exactly what wording the original master agreement, as now amended on multiple occasions, actually contains.”
James said he and the association board predict that Lantic Sugar, the owner and operator of Alberta’s only sugar factory, will oppose the development of a new master agreement beginning with the 2015 crop year because the current situation serves its purposes.
“Sound business practices dictate that the parties to an agreement should know exactly what has been agreed to and be able to review, and understand, all of their respective rights and obligations there under,” James said.
Executive director Gerald Third said he doesn’t know whether the absence of the master agreement in association hands will help or hinder the process of developing a new one and negotiating the next contract.
“What we’ve got is a document that’s been amended numerous times for I don’t know how long, so we don’t know whether there’s obligations in there that we’re responsible for, or obligations that they’re (Lantic) responsible for,” he said.
“It’s kind of been lost over time.”
