Sask. crop groups exploring merger

Nov 22, 2022

Farmers have until Dec. 11 to review a consultation document and provide feedback

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

Two Saskatchewan crop groups want farmers to weigh in about a potential merger.

The Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission (Sask Wheat) and the Saskatchewan Winter Cereals Development Commission (SWCDC) are giving farmers until Dec. 11 to review a consultation document and provide feedback.

The four-page document proposes that Sask Wheat assume the mandate of SWCDC for winter cereals, including research, advocacy, market development, grower relations and communication activities.

Sask Wheat and SWCDC

The work to get to this point started about 18 months ago, said Carol Ann Patterson, executive director of the SWCDC.

“This has been in discussion for the last year and a half amongst our board about how to approach the next five to 10 years of winter cereals acreage on the prairies,” she told Farms.com. “Levy revenue is decreasing, and we did an analysis and recognized that winter cereals acreages are decreasing.”

Winter cereals acreages are lower because of changes in crop rotation.

Winter cereals used to follow a four-year cycle. But that’s changed to a two-year cycle given improvements in crop technology, she said.

“When you have canola not being harvested until almost late September, it reduces the window for producers to plant winter cereals,” Patterson said.

SWCDC approached Sask Wheat about a potential merger.

In January 2022, at each individual organization’s annual general meeting, both passed a resolution to explore amalgamation.

Those survey results cited multiple benefits to a potential partnership, including wheat having one voice and a better use of checkoff dollars.

“It’s not an easy decision when an organization decides it has to amalgamate, but everything is being done in the best interest of producers,” Patterson said. “The levy dollars are still going to go towards research and advocacy, and Sask Wheat will continue to work with other organizations across the prairies to promote winter cereals.”

Once the deadline passes for the December consultation, the two organizations will make the results public for farmers to review prior to upcoming AGMs.

“If the results come back positive, then separate resolutions will be put forth at our respective AGMs in January in 2023,” Patterson said. “If those resolutions are passed then we will look to amalgamate at the end of the crop fiscal year, which is always July 31 in Saskatchewan.”

Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators