Ontario Farm Products revamps processing vegetable negotiation committees

by SUSAN MANN

Just why the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission wants to change the composition of the province’s processing vegetables’ negotiating committees has one industry spokesperson scratching his head.

The current negotiating committee structure is working fine, says Al Krueger, Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers Association executive assistant, when asked about the commission’s proposal to amend processing vegetable regulations to ensure, as is stated in its recent Ontario Regulatory Registry posting, there is “active grower participation in the negotiating agencies for vegetables for processing.”

Krueger says he’s unsure “where the commission got the idea active growers do not participate in negotiations because they absolutely do.”

He also questions why the processors should be permitted to determine the participants of the growers’ side in the negotiations.

The commission’s registry posting says a fall 2015 meeting with processors prompted the change. The processors indicated they preferred to negotiate prices with the growers who supplied them.

“Name one other instance where the party that you’re negotiating with gets to determine who sits on the other side of the table,” says Krueger. “That’s a little bit what we’re getting into here.”

Donald Epp, executive director of the association, couldn’t be reached for comment.  

Krueger notes each crop has a negotiating committee. On the grower side, the negotiating team is made up of three to four board directors and farmers growing the crop under negotiation are on the committee. For example, the board members who grow tomatoes are on the tomato negotiating committee.

There may not be growers on the board with contacts from all of the processors but there are three tomato growers on the board “and certainly those growers can represent the interests of industry at the negotiations,” he says.

In cases where there aren’t any board directors growing the crop being negotiated, the board appoints the chairman or past chairman along with a couple of growers of that crop to the negotiating committee. That has happened in the past with onions.

The commission has proposed to amend the regulations to “specify minimum requirements for active growers of each processor to be participants of the negotiating agency for each vegetable.”

Krueger says, “it takes a certain type of person to accept the request to be on a negotiating committee. Not everybody wants to sit across the table from their buyer.” Furthermore, many farmers say they pay licence fees so they don’t have to worry about stuff like negotiations, and that’s “what we have a board for.”

The board directors are democratically elected from the group of committeemen who were elected by growers at the organization’s annual meeting. Krueger says the board directors “are the growers that growers, as a body, have elected to negotiate on their behalf.”

The board’s executive decides which board members sit on each negotiating committee.

Krueger says they plan to submit a response to the commission’s proposal. The deadline for public comments is March 21.

The commission says in its posting it intends to finalize the amendments by the middle of the year so the changes can be implemented in time for the negotiations for the 2017 crop. BF