Grain Farmers director resigns after two months

Saturday, March 27, 2010

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

Grain Farmers of Ontario isn’t wasting any time replacing director Arden Schneckenberger, Cornwall, who resigned his directorship earlier this week.

Delegates of District 14, comprised of Prescott, Russell, Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, will meet next week and elect a new director, says Grain Farmers chairman Don Kenny of Ottawa Carleton.

Schneckenberger predicts it won’t be hard for the new grain growers’ organization, which boasts a membership of 28,000 corn wheat and soybean growers, to replace him. “We have a number of delegates who have expressed interest in being director for this area,” he says.

Schneckenberger, who is 52 and has been involved in farm organizations for 30 years, cited “no real burning issue” behind his resignation only two months into his term. He did say that the task of strategic planning that lies ahead looks daunting. “I thought more of that would be done ahead of time” by an interim board, he says.

“A guy has to be fully enthused” about an organization, he says. Two months into his time as a director “I don’t have that enthusiasm anymore,” says Schneckenberger, whose father helped start the Ontario Corn Producers’ Association.

He did not connect his resignation to an earlier announcement that Dale Petrie, Grain Farmers’ vice president of strategic development, was leaving at the end of this week. Petrie was the general manager of Ontario Soybean Growers before the merger with the corn producers association and the Ontario wheat board which became official at the beginning of the year.

Kenny says Grain Farmers will hold its first strategic planning session on April 13 and expects to wrap up its plan by Aug.1. BF