Stumble Upon

del.icio.us

Digg

Facebook

Print

Email

speakup

Although the National Farmers’ Union has been active in New Brunswick for decades, it wasn’t until Saturday, March 15, that it elected its first slate of officers and became an official New Brunswick organization.

Enlarge Photo

Photo by Robert LaFrance

Barb Somerville, a Juniper area farmer, is the secretary of the newly created District 2 of the National Farmers’ Union’s Region One of the Atlantic Provinces.

Region One of the NFU, which covers the Atlantic region, now contains District 2, New Brunswick, which saw its slate of officers elected March 15 in Perth-Andover.

The inaugural meeting elected Jean-Eudes Chaisson as district director; Betty Brown of Summerfield as national director; Sally McGrath as women’s director; and Marc Coté as youth director. Barb Somerville of Juniper will serve as NFU District 2 secretary, with Judy Barr as treasurer.

The March 15 meeting was the result of a vigorous recruiting drive by the NFU in New Brunswick and the result of “stable funding legislation” by the New Brunswick government.

Without a New Brunswick chapter, the NFU, created by an act of Parliament in 1969, would not have been able to see its members take part in the funding which can see farmers benefit to the tune of many thousands of dollars.

Until the NFU’s District 2 was created, only members of the farmer organization Agriculture Alliance of New Brunswick could to take part in the funding program. Today a membership in the NFU District 2 entitles the holder to benefits including the stable funding, rebates on fuel taxes, vehicle licensing fees, and other help.

Gerry Chevrier and Ben Mersereau, representatives from the New Brunswick Department of Agriculture and Aquaculture were on hand in Perth-Andover to answer questions about the Agricultural Producers Registration and Farm Organization Funding Act, known as farm income stabilization.

The morning half of Saturday’s meeting, which was held at the Royal Canadian Legion Hall in Perth-Andover, was chaired by New Denmark farmer Robert Jeppesen, while Brown chaired the afternoon session. Both Jeppesen and Brown are farmers with a long history of being active in agriculture issues.

Among the speakers at the morning session was NFU national president Stewart Wells of Saskatchewan, who touched on the organization’s history and stressed that the NFU, although often connected with the NDP, is not aligned with any political party.

“The National Farmers’ Union is a non-partisan organization,” he told the assembled delegates.

“That’s a lot different from saying that we’re not political. We are most definitely political, just not partisan.”

Wells said a primary difference between the NFU and many other farm organizations is the union’s refusal to accept corporate memberships.

“We’re just not interested in mega-operations,” he said.

The newly created organization placed several resolutions on the table. All passed unanimously.

The resolutions included one to have the crop insurance commission quickly dispose of diseased potatoes and collect crop insurance; one to set up a committee to investigate the feasibility of wind energy at the farm level; one to persuade the government to compensate farmers who find Potato Cyst Nematodes in their crop; and finally, they resolved that the NFU communicate its opposition to uranium mining in rural Canada through letters to the prime minister and all provincial and territorial premiers.

Français : L’Union nationale des fermiers sera dorénavant l’une de deux voix pour les agriculteurs du Nouveau-Brunswick. L’organisme a fait la demande pour des programmes d’appui de financement du gouvernement. L’Union a élu ses premiers officiers lors d’une réunion tenue récemment à Perth-Andover.