Calls for one peak grain representative body

Speaking on behalf of WA's SFOs, including WAFarmers, Pastoralists and Graziers' Association of WA (PGA) and WA Grains Group (WAGG), WAFarmers Grains Council president Mark Fowler said the groups were united in the view that they wanted to see Grain Growers Limited (GGL) and Grain Producers Australia (GPA) work together to reach that outcome.

Their request follows Mr Fowler's pointed radio interview last week where he questioned the legitimacy of Grain Growers Limited (GGL) in representing Australia's graingrowers and, in particular, the extent to which the organisation represented WA's graingrowers.

Mr Fowler has since reaffirmed WAFarmers perspective of GGL and continued to express concerns about the organisation making claims in its communications with growers and others that it is the "only" and "peak" grains representative body on the national stage.

"That is patently false," Mr Fowler said.

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He said some comments made by the organisation seemed to have the intention of building GGL's profile and spoke to an agenda to sideline GPA and gain turf in the advocacy space.

Mr Fowler said these comments included GGL chairman Brett Hosking's statement in GGL's annual report, "we've worked hard to ensure we're the first and only organisation government and industry turn to, to understand grain farmers".

"Just recently, the GGL chair sent an email to Australian graingrowers reporting how GGL had been meeting the members of the new government and its cabinet to represent the views of graingrowers on market competition, climate change and carbon, biosecurity and on the fuel tax credit scheme," Mr Hosking said.

"Unfortunately, as a WA graingrower and the president of the WAFarmers Grain Council, I have received no communication from GGL about any of this.

"Alastair Falconer, WAGG, and Gary McGill, PGA, have said the same in relation to them and their members.

"So the WA SFOs are highly uncomfortable about the situation where GGL is purporting to represent WA graingrowers on these matters, when we as growers and growers representatives have little or no input informing their views."

GPA and GGL history and structures

Sometimes in order to go forward, we need to go backwards - a phrase heard a few times when writing this article - so I did just that.

Prior to Australia's export wheat industry being deregulated in 2007/08, the national grower representative organisation was the Grains Council of Australia (GCA).

GCA's structure was inclusive of all of Australia's SFOs, with its funding model heavily reliant on those groups.

However when the GCA folded, following the deregulation of Australia's wheat export industry, there was no group, under legislation, nominated as the representative organisation (RO) for the Australian grains industry.

To correct this, the GCA initiated two industry roundtables in October 2009 and February 2010, which led to the formation of the GPA.

From 2010 until September 2015, GPA was the only Australian grains RO, which held the responsibility for the legislative oversight of the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) under the Primary Industries Research and Development (PIRD) Act.

While, initially, the GPA structure was to be a direct, individual, farmer representative organisation, its model later changed to include member SFOs.

All of the delegates of GPA, including its member SFOs, are volunteers and all of the members of GPA and its SFOs are fee-paying members.

GPA's constitution allows for GGL to be a member of the organisation's policy council if it chooses.

Running alongside the GPA, the GGL was borne out of the Premium Wheatgrowers Association formed in New South Wales, in 1958, which later changed its name to the Prime Wheat Association.

In 1992 the Prime Wheat Association purchased the assets of the NSW government-owned Grain Handling Authority, later renamed GrainCorp.

In 2000, the organisation merged with Victorian Grain Services to form Grain Growers Association (GGA) as part of GrainCorp's merger with the Victorian grain handler.

In 2003, GGA brought Queensland into the fold when it accepted 2500 Queensland members as part of a merger between GrainCorp and Queensland bulk handler GrainCo.

In 2010 the organisation changed its name to Grain Growers Limited and in 2011 GGL sold its shares in GrainCorp (and the Kondinin Group), making the company independent of the grains supply chain so that it could focus its efforts on representing Australian grain farmers.

In the years following, GGL gradually spread itself to incorporate both South Australia and Western Australia, becoming a national grains representative body.

Today the organisation has significant assets of about $120 million, deriving from its historic investment in GrainCorp Limited and, as it is a charity, GGL members do not pay a fee to be part of the organisation.

Following about four and a half years of GPA and GGL contesting which organisation should have the responsibility of the national grains RO role (from about 2010), the government launched a review and, in September 2015, the then Federal agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce controversially decided to jointly award the RO role to both organisations.

This meant both bodies were responsible for the legislative oversight of the GRDC, which spends millions per year on industry research and development, and other services, combining grower levy and government funds.

In the years since, industry stakeholders have criticised the decision made by Mr Joyce, with some saying it duplicated the voice of the Australian grains industry and was an inefficient outcome for the industry.

Two groups - one too many?

WAFarmers is one group which believes that Mr Joyce's decision back in 2015 wasn't a good one.

"We think it was a mistake, as these organisations are not working well together, GGL seems to be actively seeking to undermine GPA and even if they were working well together it is a highly inefficient setup, with two bodies supervising one, in any case," Mr Fowler said.

When questioned as to whether he thought it was hypocritical of WA's SFO groups to seek unity when there were three grains representative bodies in WA, Mr Fowler said it had been, for a long time, WAFarmers' policy to seek to unite the three SFOs.

"In fact, I was one of the instigators of the last push a few years ago," Mr Fowler said.

"However we do understand that PGA has a very clear set of ideals and principles that they wish to preserve and protect.

"For that reason, they wish to remain their own discrete organisation and we respect that."

Despite historic differences between the SFOs in WA, Mr Fowler said in recent times the two organisations had found themselves working very well together and, on most issues, were of a similar view.

"When that happens, we are increasingly making joint statements to strengthen the power of our advocacy," Mr Fowler said.

However he said none of the three SFOs in WA purported to represent all of WA's growers.

"We are all very clear that we have our own members and that we speak only for that fraction of growers who are our members and the free riders (people who share our views but are not members) who are of a similar view," Mr Fowler said.

Free versus fee paying members

In the shots fired at GGL, WAFarmers also questioned the legitimacy of its free membership structure, stating that a fee-paying membership incentivised members to interact with their delegates more due to them wanting accountability for their investment.

"What sanction does a member have if there is no practical consequence of withdrawing their membership?" Mr Fowler said.

"It carries more weight with government and industry when you advocate for people who have parted with a meaningful membership fee.

"Compare that with the situation where no membership is payable and the reverse is true - if you have paid nothing then you expect nothing, and the government and industry know this.

"I would question how many members GGL would have in a year if they suddenly required $2000 per year in membership fees."

GPA and GGL WA representation

SFOs including WAFarmers Grains, which has 14 delegates spread across the various graingrowing regions of WA, are delegates of the GPA and WAGG also sits on the GPA policy council.

While the PGA is not a member of the GPA, the group confirmed to Farm Weekly that if it was to become a member of a national grains representative group, it would be the GPA.

GGL's National Policy Group includes 15 members who are elected from across Australia.

Of those 15, there are three policy council members from WA - Tracey Lefroy, Moora, Frank O'Hare Cunderdin and Judith Foss, Bruce Rock.

GGL's WA representation also includes grower engagement officer, Alan Meldrum, who moves throughout the State to talk with graingrowers, and their deputy chairman, York farmer Rhys Turton.

However Mr Fowler said GGL's WA representatives appeared to be "concentrated in a fairly small geographic area" and that he was not clear on how their policy council members obtained their members' views on policy.

"One grower engagement officer and three policy council delegates are not adequate to distill the views of a State which produces such a significant proportion of the nation's grain and a bigger portion of the exported grain (and a corresponding proportion of the GRDC levies)," Mr Fowler said.

He said if GGL wanted to represent the views of WA growers, the organisation needed to "seriously upgrade the legitimacy and quality of their connection to WA growers".