10/27/05 Will there be a merger?

If you ask all three organizations involved with the effort in merging or consolidating & the name depending on the proposal under consideration at the time and the point of view of any of the groups involved & they will eventually find a way to join forces. But for now, the National Association of Wheat Growers, U.S. Wheat Associates, and Wheat Export Trade Education Committee, are back to finding that specific proposal that all three sides can agree upon. The latest effort, as proposed by U.S. Wheat Associates, was rejected by N.A.W.G.'s board 18 to 11 at the recent fall meeting in Portland. N.A.W.G. President Sherman Reese says one of the main reasons the proposal was rejected was the structure of voting within the merged organizations. U.S. Wheat wanted the vote, if state wheat commissions and grower groups could not decide how they would divide their representation and votes on the board, to default to check off funded commissions. REESE: There's basically three states on the U.S. Wheat side that can't give up the weighted vote situation, and there are a number of states on the N.A.W.G. side that can't abide by that situation. The three states mentioned by Reese & Oklahoma, Montana, and North Dakota & were the catalyst behind the U.S. Wheat proposal, but also the deciding votes against a W.E.T.E.C. proposal supported by N.A.W.G. at the 2005 National Grains Conference in Reno. So what now? Reese says the U.S. Wheat proposal that came out of their summer meeting in Oklahoma City was not the only one discussed. REESE: Maybe some of the compromises that were thrown out at Oklahoma City in favor of waiting to see whether or not this proposal would fly or not, those may come back around again since this proposal died. However, timing will delay any discussions between the three groups to move forward with any wheat organization consolidation plan, at least until the 2006 National Grains Conference in February. REESE: One of the things you run into now is we're going into not only the planting season for most of our members but also later on in the fall beginning about the middle of November an extensive amount of travel to state conventions and so forth which involves the officers of both groups. And so it's going to be very difficult between now and the San Antonio convention to get both boards together. And considering all parties have had to wait four years so far, the groups may remain patient in getting a consolidation / merger deal that all three organizations can be satisfied with.