The Canadian Wheat Board and the Canadian government used to split Cigi’s funding and both had oversight of its operations, but that changed when the federal government ended the CWB’s monopoly in 2012.
An interim farmer checkoff on wheat sales was set up to help fund Cigi until last year when a 15-cent-a-tonne wheat checkoff was formalized through the Manitoba Wheat and Barley Growers Association (MWBGA), Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission and Alberta Wheat Commission (AWC).
In addition, seven grain companies are members — Cargill Canada, G3 Canada, the Inland Terminal Association of Canada, Parrish & Heimbecker, Paterson Grain, Richardson International and Viterra.
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Farmers and the grain companies will equally cover about 58 per cent of Cigi’s $7.6 million 2018-19 budget. The federal government is covering about 35 per cent and the rest will come from fee-for-service projects, a Cigi official said.
Cereals Canada has an operating budget of around $1.3 million. Thirty-nine per cent of its budget comes from farmers, including the MWBGA, AWC, Saskatchewan Winter Cereals Development Corporation and Winter Cereals Manitoba, as well as the Grain Growers of Ontario and grain groups in British Columbia, Quebec and the Maritimes.
Thirty-nine per cent comes from six grain company members — Cargill Canada, G3 Canada, Parrish & Heimbecker, Richardson International, Viterra and Louis Dreyfus Canada and two processors, Canada Bread and Warburtons.
And 22 per cent comes from nine seed and/or life science companies — BASF, Bayer, Canterra Seed, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, FP Genetics, Monsanto, SeCan and Syngenta.
