Wheat and oat growers now have two new commissions in Alberta that should help them develop better crops for their fields.
The province announced Monday that it was supporting the creation of two new crop commissions in Alberta, one for wheat and one for oats. It's the first time in history that Alberta has had commissions for these crops.
Both groups start operations on Aug. 1 – the start of the new crop year and also the day that the Canadian Wheat Board's single-desk marketing policy comes to an end.
These commissions, which will promote Alberta crops and fund research into them, will be funded by refundable service charges or check-offs paid by farmers who sell wheat or oats here – 70 cents a tonne for wheat and 50 cents a tonne for oats.
That's maybe two cents a bushel or $100 a year for a 1,000-acre wheat farm, said Kent Erickson, co-chair of the Alberta Wheat Commission's steering committee.
"It's a nominal amount of money," he said, especially since farmers generally get about $10 of value back for every $1 they put into research.
By putting producer dollars on the table in the form of a voluntary fee, Erickson explained, the group hopes to convince the federal government to put up more cash for marketing and research.
"Research is the foundation of what all our farms make our money on," he said, adding that federal research dollars are drying up.
"We need to have some skin in the game," he said.
Wheat bucks
Wheat is the biggest crop in Alberta, according to Alberta Agriculture, with farmers harvesting about 8.9 million tonnes of it last year.
While Alberta has previously had commissions for winter and soft wheat, the new Alberta Wheat Commission is the first in history to manage all Alberta wheat. (The winter and soft wheat commissions have merged to form this group.)
The new commission now has 11 interim directors, and will hold regional elections this winter.
The idea for the wheat commission started back in 2008 in response to federal cuts to agriculture research, Erickson said – far before the government announced the end to the single-desk, he emphasized.
Still, the end of the single desk does add new importance to the commission, Erickson continued.
"The Canadian Wheat Board, whether you agreed with them or not, had done a lot of the marketing and end-use sales of wheat for Albertans," he said.
With the board expected to scale back these efforts, groups like the commission will have to step up to promote Alberta wheat abroad.
Groups like the Western Grains Research Foundation do exist, Erickson said, but they spread their cash across many provinces. He hopes the new commission will collect about $3.5 million a year that could be directed to Alberta-specific research, such as field trials of new seeds.
It could also fund studies into diseases such as ergot, said Greg Porozni, who represents Sturgeon County on the commission and farms near Vegreville.
Cash from the Alberta Canola Producers' Commission (which he used to chair) has backed important research into diseases like clubroot, a disease that has struck many a Sturgeon County canola field, he noted.
New crop lines can take years to develop, Erickson said, and farmers can't exploit new market niches without them.
"If we're going to find a new market and find a new end-use […] that research has to have been done 10 years ago," he said.
Oat dollars
Alberta has never had a dedicated oat research group, said Alberta Oat Growers Commission executive director Shawna Mathieson, mostly because Albertans don't grow much of it.
"Oats are a relatively small crop," she said, and aren't as profitable as other ones.
Albertans harvested just 663,200 tonnes of oats last year, according to the province, making it the fifth largest crop in Alberta.
A producer survey showed support for a commission back in 2009, she continued. The new group hopes to raise about $140,000 a year to fund variety trials and market development in Alberta, and will likely pool its funds with similar groups in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
Visit www.albertawheat.com and www.poga.ca for details.
