Crews returns as OFA president

Sunday, November 21, 2010

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

Bette Jean Crews  said she “needed more time” and she got it.

Today the Ontario Federation of Agriculture convention returned Crews, a  Trenton-area horticulture and cash crop grower to a third one-year term as the president of the province’s largest general  farm organization.

Delegates voted 151 to 121 to keep Crews in her office, turning back a strong challenge from vice president Don McCabe.

Crews campaigned on the slogan, “I need more time.” She argued that “it takes time to change. It’s not easy and it’s not painless.” The federation has been in the midst of a change in governance that took effect a year ago. In addition, Crews chairs the Ontario Agricultural Sustainability Coalition, a group of beef, pork, horticulture and crop producers, looking for a better deal from the provincial and federal governments. “We have not gotten to the position when we can assume we will speak with one voice,” to governments, she says.

McCabe, a cash cropper from Inwood, in Lambton County, campaigned on the slogan “it’s time,” short for its time for change. He emphasized his experience dealing with environmental issues such as carbon credits and biomass. McCabe has been on the OFA executive for five years. He’s a former director of the corn producers association and the wheat board.

Before the vote, both candidates made speeches and then fielded delegates’  questions for more than a half hour covering a wide range of issues from a failed scheme to trade carbon credits at the Chicago Board of Trade to outsourcing communications and fiscal responsibility at the head office of the farm organization. BF