- The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, the once-mighty agricultural co-operative that became Viterra, is remembered by its iconic, but decaying, grain elevators that still dot much of the province’s rural landscape.
- Others come only after a raw, hard struggle, a grim rancher straining to pull the calf from a desperate cow.
- Others come only after a raw, hard struggle, a grim rancher straining to pull the calf from a desperate cow.
- Bunge, headquartered in Missouri, wants more of it; the wheat pool founders, based all over the province, wanted some of it.
Increasingly consolidated industry
- The top five companies already control 90 per cent of the global grain trade; six of them sell 70 per cent of all agrochemicals and four of those also sell 60 per cent of all the seed.
- Farmers owing money on contracts they were unable to fulfill because of events out of their control.
The view from Australia
- To get a glimpse into what was lost when the Wheat Pool became Viterra, we can look to Australia.
- Like Canada, farmers in Australia no longer have a national wheat marketing board.
- Unlike in Canada, however, Australian farmers held on to their co-operative grain handling company, Co-operative Bulk Handling (CBH).
As a result, CBH says average post-farmgate costs for its members are 15 per cent lower than for Australian farmers who rely on multinational corporations — including companies like Bunge and Viterra — for storage, movement, marketing and export. Through CBH, Australian farmers don’t just have a powerful corporate entity looking out for their financial interests, but a company that can help them navigate government lobbying and relationships with agricultural input providers and their growing arsenal of data being used to power artificial intelligence applications.
Co-operative green shoots
- While there are places in rural Prairies Canada that are prospering — especially those proximate to urban centres — the long-term trends remain.
- But while perhaps dormant, the co-operative impulse is not gone and may indeed be ripe for a reawakening.
- He is a fourth-generation farmer, small-business owner and director on the board of the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan.
Marc-Andre Pigeon receives funding from the co-operative and credit union sectors as well as funding from government funding bodies for his research into co-operatives and credit unions. Natalie Kallio receives funding from the co-operative and credit union sectors as well as from government funding bodies for research into co-operatives.
