by SUSAN MANN
Henry Van Ankum was elected chair of Grain Farmers of Ontario at the board of directors meeting this week.
He replaces Don Kenny, who completed two years of service and was the first chair of Grain Farmers after Ontario’s three grain grower groups (corn, soybeans and wheat) amalgamated in 2010.
Van Ankum, who represents District 10 (Grey, Bruce and Wellington), wasn’t immediately available for an interview. He farms 1,200 acres of corn, soybeans and wheat with his wife, Susan, near Alma.
The representative for District 2 (Kent County), Mark Huston, was elected first vice chair, while Mark Brock from the Stratford area in District 9 was elected second vice-chair.
A new member on the executive committee is Leo Guilbeault from District 1 (Essex) who will serve as executive member. He is a former chair of the previous provincial soybean growers group.
There are two new directors on the Grain Farmers board for 2012. They are Kevin Armstrong representing District 7 (Waterloo and Oxford) and Colin Elliott representing District 11 (Dufferin, Simcoe, Halton, Peel and York). BF
Comments
A new generation of farmers is leaders in control of ontario grain.
Let us hope they are more qualified than the past
It is easy to be a good farm leader when prices and profit is good . What has been lacking is the past leaders did no think ahead for periods of price cycle lows which always happens. Decade after decade this has happened and we still dont have a good RMP program. Rmp is an illusion that the federal governmemt has no intension of funding by their 60%.
A problem is when times are good farmers get greedy and stupid pushing up land prices etc. Right now Farmer optimisim is at a high. Farmers should know these good economic times dont last for ever and prod their leaders to be more effective on economic income issues, it seems our new organization is bloated with staff promoting wellness. The big push is research
Time will tell if these new leaders with advanced leadership training have vision. The GFO has 28000 members, but how many are active producing commerical farmers? Farm magazines do stories on farmers with their pictures of crossed arms and hated, showing how their sucsess in farm acreage expansion happened. With all this farmer expansion and economy of scale the GFO will only need 10000 farmers to farm Ontario. looks like we have problems creating problems with less rural voters etc etc ect
The new leadership at GFO would be well-advised to tone down the rhetoric about ethanol - especially when it comes to casting aspersions on the ethics and professionalism of those, particularly the George Morris Centre, who point out that that the legislated benefits of ethanol to corn farmers are, by definition, a legislated cost to others.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton O
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