Grain Growers president sets priorities

Newly re-elected Grain Growers of Canada (GGC) president Gary Stanford says he's pleased and humbled to be back as president for a second straight one-year term.

“It was kind of an honour to be voted in by my peers on the Grain Growers – my director members – to stay on as president of the Grain Growers of Canada,” Stanford told the Gazette.

“There's a lot to work on and I think that most of the directors felt that I understand a lot of the issues and so you could continue to stay in that capacity.”

Stanford, 58, a farmer from the Magrath area near Lethbridge, was re-elected to the post on Dec. 3.

He names three main issues the CGC are working on.

One is Bill C-18, the new Grain Act, which enacts changes to the Plant Breeders' Rights Act.

The bill has been passed by the House of Commons and is now in the Senate.

Sanford says overall, the new Act will help farmers.

“You'll be able to farm-save your seed now. It'll be in legislation. Before, people did it, but it wasn't really in the Act,” he said.

However, that only applies in certain cases, he notes.

“If you just buy regular seed like Ag Canada has produced you can use it yourself. You can't sell it to your neighbours and you still won't be able to, but you'll be able to save it on your own farm,” he said.

However, Stanford says if farmers buy seed from a private company, they'll be able to use it for a certain term – perhaps one year – but then they'll have to buy new seed again.

“So you'll still have to follow the rules of whoever you buy it from, but with the public varieties, which are 90 per cent of the varieties in Canada, you'll be able to save your seed, and that's in the legislation,” he said.

Stanford says the new legislation also enables private sector companies to bring in new varieties of grain. He says some private companies have expressed interest in doing so.

“They're breaking ground on new facilities and they're looking at doing more wheat plant breeding in Canada,” he says. “There'll always be a big market for wheat in Canada. This will open it up so that then we'll be able to have better varieties coming down in the future, like say, what happened with canola 20 years ago.”

Stanford says the GGC also wants the federal government to lean on railway companies to move more grain. So he's happy with the federal government's order-in-council requiring railways to do just that.

Stanford notes the order-in-council doesn't require the railways to move as much grain as they're required to do in the spring and summer months, but he's OK with that. He says there are safety issues when it comes to moving grain by rail in the winter.

Stanford also likes several provisions in the Canada Grain Act, including one that requires grain companies to be licensed or bonded.

He also wants to see the Canadian Grain Commission stay in place.

“Some farmers want to see the Grain Commission gone so they don't have to pay the fees. But on the other hand, you have to understand that the Grain Commission has a role to play,” he said.

“They look after the grades of your grain, but also they make sure you're getting paid your money for your grain. (They also make sure that) the grain that gets loaded on ships and at the elevators is the right grain that's going through. So the Canadian Grain Commission does a lot of stuff and does a lot of things that support farmers.”

The GGC are also trying to strengthen agricultural safety nets like the Agristablity program.

“Some farmers are dropping out of Agristability because they don't think that it'll ever be worth it – they're better off to start their own insurance fund,” he said.

“We've got to work with the Ag people in Ottawa and say, ‘OK look, we've got to look at a better program, because you know, if the grain prices stay good, farmers will never ask for anything. But if there's ever a huge drought or a huge wreck of some kind, that's when farmers need the stability.”