Oat and barley growers to vote on joining Grain Farmers of Ontario

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

by SUSAN MANN

The Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission will be mailing out 1,500 ballots next month to eligible oat and barley growers so they can vote on a proposal to be represented by Grain Farmers of Ontario.

Commission chair Geri Kamenz says by email (provided by commission team leader Gordon Stock), the mail-in vote will be conducted during the first two weeks of November. All oat and barley farmers who grew or marketed those crops in 2013 and this year are eligible to vote.

Currently there isn’t a farm organization that represents oat and barley growers, it says in the proposal developed by the oat and barley representation committee. The committee is made up of farmers, industry and a Grain Farmers director. The non-voting members on the committee are: an Ontario government official, a Grain Farmers staff person and the committee secretary.

There was an Oat and Barley Council in Ontario from 2001 to 2010 that brought together the entire value chain. But membership was voluntary and the organization didn’t have a reliable and sufficient revenue stream, the proposal says.

Oats and barley are grown on 258,000 acres across Ontario and the crops have farm cash receipts of $82.8 million annually.

Committee member Carl Coleman, who’s also president of Bramhill Seeds Ltd., says oats and barley are grown in all parts of Ontario but the two crops are particularly important in northern Ontario, in the New Liskeard and Thunder Bay areas. “It’s a primary crop up there whereas in southern Ontario it’s not a primary crop. It’s a secondary crop.” That’s because southern Ontario farmers grow way more corn, soybeans and wheat than northern growers.

The committee’s proposal says the purpose of oat and barley farmers joining Grain Farmers is to make Ontario-grown oats and barley more profitable by improving their returns and providing enhanced risk management tools.

“There needs to be producer support for research,” Coleman notes. The proposal calls for estimated license fees for farmers selling to licensed elevators or to mills to be $1.30 per tonne for barley and $1.65 per tonne for oats. On farm use of oats and barley and farm-to-farm sales are exempt from the license fees.

In the proposal, the committee estimates 50 per cent of oats and barley currently grown in Ontario is sold to licensed receiving points. Based on that level, oat and barley license fees will generate $125,000 to $150,000 per year of additional revenue for Grain Farmers. “That revenue will be invested in services provided by Grain Farmers of Ontario to enable the specific focus on oat and barley issues related to research, market development and advocacy,” the proposal says.  

Coleman says Grain Farmers already has an organizational and administrative structure in place. But “if we did this on our own we would have to set up all of that organization. Grain Farmers of Ontario already have it in place so why not just join them?”

The proposal doesn’t call for any changes to the existing governance structure of Grain Farmers. The organization is governed by a board made up of 15 directors who each represent their district. Directors are elected to serve the best interests of all crops under Grain Farmers’ mandate and not to represent specific crops.

Grain Farmers says in the proposal it’s willing to cooperate to expand its crop mandate but the initiative has to be led by oat and barley growers. A Grain Farmers official couldn’t be reached for comment.

If oat and barley growers vote in favour of the proposal and the commission confirms that approval, regulatory changes would be implemented in the first half of next year, while the harvest next year would be the first oat and barley crop to come under Grain Farmers’ authority, the proposal says.

According to commission guidelines, a ‘yes’ vote requires the support of two-thirds of those voting to approve the proposal and those yes voters must represent at least 50 per cent of the total production of all voters. “The commission retains the ability to take other factors into consideration,” Kamenz says. BF