SKATOON (Staff) – This year’s National Farmers Union convention is a time for both celebration and soul-searching.
NFU members gathering in Edmonton this week will be celebrating the union’s 25th anniversary and looking back at their accomplishments over the past quarter-century.
But they will also be grappling with serious questions about the organization’s future, with some influential members suggesting the union cut back on its political lobbying and focus more on providing practical, useful information to its members.
A special committee set up last year to look for ways to restructure and revitalize the organization will be reporting at this week’s convention.
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“We have to really decide what direction we’ll head in the next 25 years,” said union president Art Macklin. “We have to take a look at our internal structure and resources and decide how to utilize those resources the best.”
Like all farm organizations that depend on voluntary membership, the farmers union is facing an increasingly difficult challenge getting people to devote the time and money needed to make it work. Family memberships have dipped below 4,000 and the organization remains deep in debt.
The tradition of left-of-centre rural activism that fueled the organization’s activities during the 1970s has wilted away.
“There is a recognition among all the members that things have changed dramatically in the rural areas since we were founded 25 years ago,” said Don Kelsey, the NFU’s regional co-ordinator for Saskatchewan.
With many farmers working off the farm to pay the bills, it’s asking a lot of people to donate what little free time they have to a farm organization that might not provide any immediate, tangible benefits.
“People go home after work and they want to stay home, not go to meetings,” said Kelsey.
Just ask Keith Proven. The Minnedosa, Man., farmer, a long-time NFU activist and Manitoba regional co-ordinator from 1989-94, won’t be attending this week’s convention because he’s working as a teacher.
“I just couldn’t afford to keep on going with the kind of commitment I had before,” he said of his decision to scale back his NFU activities.
He thinks the organization should continue to do policy analysis and make sure its views are known to the public and the membership, although he said, the NFU could be less “strident” in tone.
At the same time, there should be less active lobbying of federal and provincial governments. It should be done on an ad hoc, voluntary basis, as the issues demand and as members are willing to make themselves available.
Wendy Manson, a farmer from Conquest, Sask., and member of the special review committee, says the NFU will always be involved in farm policy, but thinks it may be a good idea to offer more up-front, concrete services to members as well.
That could include things like financial planning, helping farmers market non-board crops, providing computer services or organizing collective purchases of farm inputs at discounted prices.
She said the committee has also been looking at ways to make it easier for members to participate given the demands on their time. Everything from the length of the national convention to the local election process to the organization’s newspaper have come under review.
Some NFU leaders say one reason to cut back on lobbying is that on many of the most important issues, governments say their hands are tied by new world trading rules and free trade agreements.
“What has changed is not so much the ability of farm organizations to influence government but the ability of governments to actually implement policy that will shape the farm economy and rural life,” said Nettie Wiebe, a former vice-president and women’s president from Delisle, Sask.
