GENEVA — A new international farm organization is forming out of the ashes of last year’s collapse of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers.
Canada is leading the way.
The World Farmers’ Organization has been created with a head office in Rome and former North Dakota National Farmers Union president Robert Carlson as the first president.
A key driver behind the new organization was the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and president Ron Bonnett, who served as interim president until the founding meeting in mid-December.
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Bonnett, who remains the North American representative on the board of directors, helped create the working group that led to the proposal for a new organization.
The CFA is the sole Canadian member and has budgeted $25,000 annually for the organization.
The WFO already has 29 country members with others waiting in the wings, Bonnett said during a December meeting of the World Trade Organization in Geneva.
Earlier, he had been in Rome for the founding WFO meeting.
Bonnett said a new international farm organization is needed to deal with international organizations that make policies affecting farmers and need farmer input.
“One of the things we are finding is that international organizations like the FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization) and the World Bank are really reaching out to us,” he said.
“They make policies that affect national governments, and if there is not an organization like ours, someone else will step up to say they speak for farmers and that is not necessarily good for us.”
IFAP, which was created in 1946, imploded last year under the weight of budget deficits and political dysfunction.
Canadian farm leaders often served as president, and Canadian David King was the longtime Paris-based secretary general.
Canadian Jack Wilkinson stepped down in 2008 after six years as IFAP president and was replaced by Zambian farm leader Ajay Vashee, the first developing country president.
King was soon fired and IFAP found itself in financial difficulty before it was put into receivership last year.
Bonnett said that while the international farm organization does not always have a high profile, it plays a role at important international talks.
“After the demise of IFAP, a lot of groups came forward claiming to speak for farmers to international organizations,” he said.
“They were often left-wing groups that represented organic, wanted to get corporate out of farming, wanted to press food self-sufficiency. These are part of the debate, but they do not represent the full picture of farm interests and this was the kind of advice they were getting.”
The CFA contribution, set by a WFO formula, is just one-third of the dues it paid to IFAP. The total WFO budget for the first year is $500,000.
The decision was made to locate the head office in Rome because of the presence of FAO, the World Food Programme and other international agricultural programs.
Bonnett said the WFO will have stronger governance and financial oversight to avoid the problems that brought the IFAP down.
“With good governance rules, you can have a bad president but there is a check on that.”
