SINTALUTA, Sask. — Young farmers will need incentive to join Saskatchewan Wheat Pool if the proposed share offering goes ahead, said one member attending a meeting here last week.
Terry Willoughby, one of six farmers at a meeting held to discuss the pool’s equity proposal, said older members will be able to convert their equity to shares and get dividends, but new members would no longer have the assurance of equity payouts beginning at age 65 and they won’t have any shares.
Willoughby suggested new members could acquire shares through purchases and business done with the pool.
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Erin Canham, SWP treasurer, said the company has looked at this type of option and hasn’t ruled it out, and agreed the pool recognizes the need to attract new members. One possibility is allowing new members to “buy a certain number of shares over a certain period of time at a lower price if they buy a certain amount of product.”
But he cautioned against making the system too complex, and said members may not be able to acquire shares as fast as they would like.
“You still need 100-share lots to buy or sell,” he said, and if farmers only receive, for example, five or six shares annually through purchases it would take them too long to acquire enough to participate in the stock exchange.
Willoughby also said any dividends from existing shares could be converted to shares instead of cash, which would help new farmers buy shares more quickly.
Canham said the final details of the share offering proposal have not been determined, and suggestions like Willoughby’s will be taken into consideration.
In an interview, Willoughby said he wasn’t sure how attractive pool equity is to new pool members now.
“I’m not sure that nowadays the equity portion even has that much to do with it,” he said.
If the share offering goes ahead, Willoughby said the pool will have to lower handling charges and offer better chemical prices. If the company doesn’t want to give members some form of patronage allocation, they will be shopping around for the best price, he said.
Noted another farmer at the meeting, “Anybody who can save a buck on the selling price will take it.”
