After three years of making, revising and scrapping plans for a pasta plant, Prairie Pasta Producers has finally developed the blueprint for a membership drive.
Bumpy doesn’t adequately describe the road this group of farmers has taken to get to this point – it has been downright bone jarring. A prolonged fight with the Canadian Wheat Board over a proposed exemption from its export monopoly and a failed escrow drive are two main reasons the pasta project has been so long in the making.
Now there is a new vision.
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The idea of building a pasta plant and mill somewhere on the Canadian Prairies has been scrapped in favour of an alliance with Dakota Growers Pasta Company, the third largest pasta producer in North America.
The first step toward accomplishing this new vision is to convince Canadian durum producers to invest in the American company.
The group had hoped to have a membership drive in place by late June and to be processing the 2001 durum crop at the Carrington, North Dakota facility. The revised goal is to sign up farmers in prime durum-growing regions by the end of harvest.
“This thing goes awful slow for me,” said Perry MacKenzie, the new chair of Prairie Pasta Producers.
“I struggle with that. As a farmer, I’m used to saying, ‘OK, this is what we’re going to do’ and we go do it.”
MacKenzie tempers his impatience with the old adage: slow but sure.
The delay isn’t all bad. It has given Prairie Pasta Producers time to assemble an advisory committee.
The committee gives the company contacts in most of the key durum-growing centres across Saskatchewan and Alberta.
MacKenzie said memberships will cost $200. Fees will cover legal expenses and the cost of hiring an accounting firm to help establish a fair price for the offering.
Dakota Growers and Prairie Pasta have not agreed on a share price. The offering will be exclusive to the members of Prairie Pasta.
For the time being, the relationship between Prairie Pasta and the wheat board has stabilized.
“We’re going to work within the existing system at this point in time,” said MacKenzie.
Prairie Pasta will continue to lobby for changes that will increase returns for its producer members, he said.
The fall membership drive will focus on portions of Saskatchewan and Alberta. MacKenzie said the company has locked up support in southeastern Saskatchewan and southwestern Manitoba.
“Where we really want to build our strength is in the western durum-growing region.”
The group has a mailing list of 1,200 durum producers from an escrow drive conducted in the spring of 2000.
That campaign, which was designed to gauge farmer interest in a pasta plant project, fell $2.2 million short of its $5 million goal. But MacKenzie said the alliance with Dakota Growers has sparked renewed interest in the company.
Prairie Pasta officials were inundated with questions about the share offering at the Western Canada Farm Progress Show held last month in Regina.
The group is attempting to get a larger list of durum growers for the membership drive.
“We’d like as many members as possible,” said MacKenzie.
