U.K.-based Bluebell is also seeking an overhaul of Bayer’s corporate governance, the report added.

A Bayer spokesperson, who declined to comment on the report, said: “Generally speaking we are always open for a constructive dialogue with our stakeholders.”

Bluebell, which has previously taken stakes in companies such as Danone and Glencore, didn’t immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

The report follows news on Monday that the activist investment fund Inclusive Capital Partners, run by hedge fund veteran Jeffrey Ubben, had acquired a 0.83 per cent stake in Bayer, which continues to suffer from a weak market value.

Bloomberg said the size of the Bluebell holding was undisclosed.

— Reporting by Shivani Tanna in Bangalore; additional reporting by Tom Sims in Frankfurt.

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Federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau on Wednesday announced Benoit Basillais, the CDC’s director of policy and economics, became the Crown corporation’s new CEO effective Monday.

Basillais replaces Serge Riendeau, the dairy producer and former Agropur Co-operative president who’s been the CDC’s chief executive since 2018.

Basillais, who studied agricultural economics in France and has a master’s degree in rural economics from Laval University, has worked for the CDC since 2003. Starting there as an economist, he was named director of policy and economics in 2016.

The new appointee “is very familiar with both the stakeholders and the issues facing the dairy industry,” Bibeau said in a release Wednesday.

“Now as CEO, I trust that he will make a significant contribution to the success of the dairy industry while increasing the transparency of the pricing mechanism.”

The CDC is tasked with co-ordinating federal and provincial dairy policies; it administers the dairy production control mechanism used to avoid production shortages or surpluses. Its CEO serves as one of three members of the commission’s board of directors, along with the chairperson and a commissioner.

Former CDC commissioner Jennifer Hayes was named as its chairperson at the end of 2021, which leaves just the commissioner’s seat vacant at the board table.

CDC governance was raised in a special report from the federal auditor general’s office in March last year, which called on the commission’s board to keep in touch with the ag minister’s office on a “timely basis” to make sure it maintains a full complement at the board table.

That report found no board meetings had to be cancelled or any decisions left unresolved, but having one empty chair at a three-member board table nevertheless “poses a significant risk that the board would be unable to make decisions and operate effectively,” the auditor general’s office said.

That poses a risk particularly for the CDC. Its requirement for members to have “significant dairy industry experience,” with one member also serving as CEO, makes it somewhat more likely that a “real, potential or perceived” conflict of interest could pop up, requiring at least one member to abstain from voting on certain decisions.

Maintaining a full slate of CDC board members, the report noted, is the responsibility of the federal Governor in Council — that is, Canada’s governor general on the advice of the federal cabinet.

An Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada spokesperson said via email Thursday the department is
in the midst of the ongoing process to fill the CDC commissioner position “following the open, transparent and merit-based processes for selecting Governor in Council appointees” — and thus can’t yet say when a commissioner appointee will be named.

The June 30 order in council to appoint Basillais as CDC CEO sets his term at four years.

Basillais “brings with him a complete understanding of the issues faced by the sector,” AAFC said in its statement Wednesday, adding his background and “extensive knowledge of the Canadian supply management system allows him to identify and present innovative approaches to each unique situation.”

Riendeau, whose term as CEO was extended in April 2021 for one additional year, “has worked to improve collaboration between segments of the dairy supply chain, and supported the modernization of supply management,” AAFC said. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The Churchill Marine Tank Farm and associated assets are also part of the deal, according to an Arctic Gateway Group release.

Pulse and durum processor AGT Foods and Ingredients and Toronto-based Fairfax Financial Holdings had held the other 50 per cent of the assets, up until the transition earlier this month, the partnership said.

“A tremendous amount of hard work has seen northern communities reach this critical milestone,” Churchill mayor and OneNorth co-chair Mike Spence said in the news release. “Together with our partners we are taking the next important steps to realize our vision for a national Arctic trade corridor.”

The OneNorth consortium of Indigenous and northern communities said it’s committed to the long-term success of the rail line and trade corridor.

The port and rail line have seen a significant turnaround since 2018, the partnership said, citing work to establish a local governance structure, which includes leadership from across northern Manitoba, to form the partnership.

“Our communities are ready to step up,” OneNorth co-chair and Opaskwayak Cree Nation Onekanew (chief) Christian Sinclair said. “We have a multi-generational socioeconomic development vision that will take this work forward as a truly northern Canadian success story.”

Under a 2018 partnership agreement supported by the federal government, AGT and Fairfax assisted OneNorth leadership in taking the Arctic Gateway Group through a “critical transition.”

Since then, passenger and freight rail service have been restored and port services have fully resumed for both import and export, including six cargo re-supply vessels for Nunavut.

Regina-based AGT will continue to provide management services during the transition period and plans to negotiate a terminal handling agreement to ship grain through the Port of Churchill.

Health and safety upgrades were undertaken on all operations, and environmental remediation and decommissioning of the former fuel tank farm was undertaken with the installation of new tanks., the partners said.

“We are very proud of all that we have accomplished over the past two and a half years with our partner, OneNorth,” AGT CEO Murad Al-Katib said in the same release.

“The long-term economic and social impact of this critical national infrastructure corridor will provide benefits to Canadians for generations.”

The port and railway had faced an uncertain future when its previous owner, U.S.-based rail operator OmniTrax, closed the rail line in 2017, after sections were washed out in high water.

After three years of no rail traffic to or from Churchill, OmniTrax sold the line to the Arctic Gateway Group consortium.

Compared to other Canadian grain-handling ports, Churchill is plagued by a much shorter shipping season, and the rail line is hampered by the shifting whims of the northern tundra.

However, loading at Churchill shaves off significant travel time for grain vessels bound for major export destinations such as in Europe, relative to ports in southern Canada such as Thunder Bay.

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As a statutory monopoly the port authority is both a port developer and regulator putting it in a conflict of interest, according to WGEA executive director Wade Sobkowich.

“We are working in a port oversight system that simply lacks proper checks and balances, in contrast to what we have in rail or air transportation where there are tools available to hold people accountable for decisions,” Sobkowich said in a news release Thursday.

“With marine ports, we have no recourse to an adequate appeal mechanism, no outside dispute resolution, no independent complaint process, and no effective input to (bod of) director nominations. The federal government needs to address these shortcomings in the Ports Modernization Review.”

The WGEA’s members are Canada’s biggest grain companies who handle more than 90 per cent of the nation’s bulk grain exports — most of them through Vancouver.

Why it matters: Most of Western Canada’s grain is exported through the Port of Vancouver; western farmers need the port to run efficiently and to keep costs, ultimately passed back to farmers, in check.

“The Government of Canada needs to act on the major clean-up of marine port governance that was recommended during the review of the Canada Transportation Act back in 2016-17,” Sobkowich said. “This is having a large negative effect on our ability to unlock existing capacity and to grow the agri-food export sector.”

Among the items on the WGEA’s list, it seeks:

• Adequate recourse to users to challenge and appeal port authority decisions.
• To address conflicts of interest that arise in port management’s role as developer and regulator/administrator.
• To make director appointment rules accountable:
• i) Overhaul nominating committee membership to reflect the users.
• ii) Remove outside interference with nominating committee decision making.
• iii) Allow people who actively work in industry to sit on the board.
• iv) Redesign appointments to adequately reflect provincial economies who rely on the port.
• To ensure port authorities are actively representing federal government jurisdiction on regulatory issues.

In 2019, 70 per cent of products exported from Vancouver were bulk commodities totalling 99.7 million tonnes — most of that from Western Canada.

Of that, 23.5 million tonnes, or 24 per cent of the total, was grain.

Total exports through Vancouver hit 144 million tonnes. Bulk grain, along with 7.5 million tonnes of containerized grain, accounted for 31 million tonnes, or 22 per cent of all Vancouver exports.

Yet the western provinces only get two seats on the port’s board — one for British Columbia and one for Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, Sobkowich said in an interview.

“Something doesn’t add up here from our perspective when you have a port that is so important to the western Canadian economy,” he said.

“The nominating committee process (for port directors) gets interfered with by port management. We’ve been trying to get someone on there with a grain background for years.”

The last nominee from the Prairie provinces was a former vice-president with Cargill.

“We couldn’t even get him an interview,” Sobkowich said.

Vancouver also doesn’t allow directors representing port users to be actively working in the industry.

“Vancouver is very unique in that sense because other ports across the world, not only allow but encourage their users to sit on the board of directors,” he said. “Rotterdam, for example, has five users on the board of directors.”

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, in a separate release Friday, said the three Prairie premiers have written to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “to express a willingness to engage and work with the federal government on the port governance structure.”

“As a group, the western provinces make up 85 per cent of the port’s export value, but only have nine per cent of the representation on the board,” Moe said. “We believe that model does not provide balanced representation for the Prairie provinces and are asking for the (port authority) board to be restructured.”

The Saskatchewan government on Friday called for the board to be made up of two federal appointees, two appointees from each of the four Prairie provinces on the recommendations of port users, and one member representing municipalities that border the port authority’s jurisdiction.

‘Valuable space’

The WGEA is also concerned about what appears to be the port’s bias in favour of promoting a new container terminal, Sobkowich said.

The WGEA also suspects its members who operate grain export terminals at the port are paying for the new container terminal, although it’s unclear due to a lack of transparency, Sobkowich said.

“We believe those who stand to benefit should be the ones that should pay,” he said. “And we don’t feel that a developer, should be a regulator and that’s what is happening here. The same party that is advancing a project without a proponent, which will use valuable space in the Port of Vancouver to do container imports and exports, is being advanced by what is essentially a government entity.

“And that same entity is regulating us — charging us rents, charging us infrastructure fees, making decisions on environmental permit applications, making decisions on land use, making decisions on leases that get renewed or don’t get renewed.”

A review of port regulation began several years ago. In September 2019 Transport Canada released a document on what it heard from stakeholders about possible changes to be made.

“But it doesn’t look like it addressed the issues we have addressed here,” Sobkowich said.

Many of the complaints raised by the WGEA involve requirements under the Canada Marine Act, the Port of Vancouver said in a statement Thursday.

“It’s a complex mandate that requires balancing many opposing interests of a broad range of stakeholders, ultimately having to make decisions in the best interests of Canadians generally,” the port said.

“Many of the issues raised by the WGEA — governance, board nominations, and having to consider the impacts of port operations on local communities — are dictated by the Canada Marine Act, and therefore beyond the control of the port authority.”

To fulfill its mandate the port must to ensure infrastructure is in place to handle growing international trade, the port said. A lot of investment has gone into the port during the last 10 years benefitting all terminals, including for grain, resulting in record grain exports.

“Many of the current projects under way are specifically to build capacity for the grain sector, and others will address the increasing demand for container trade,” the port said. “Interestingly, containers are used to ship a significant amount of grain so those container capacity projects will benefit the agricultural sector. Any fees that we may charge terminal operators for common-use infrastructure improvements are subject to consultation with those operators.”

The port’s biggest challenge is the lack of industrial land, the port said.

“That may require difficult choices with respect to a current tenant, but overall the Port of Vancouver will remain Canada’s gateway for agricultural exports to the world.”

Check next week’s issue of the Manitoba Co-operator for more on this story.

— Allan Dawson reports for the Manitoba Co-operator from Miami, Man.

The port’s reply

The Port of Vancouver issued the following statement Thursday in response to concerns raised by the Western Grain Elevator Association on how the Port of Vancouver operates:

As a Canada Port Authority, we have a federal mandate established under the Canada Marine Act, to enable Canada’s trade through the Port of Vancouver, while protecting the environment and considering local communities. It’s a complex mandate that requires balancing many opposing interests of a broad range of stakeholders, ultimately having to make decisions in the best interests of Canadians generally.

Many of the issues raised by the WGEA — governance, board nominations, and having to consider the impacts of port operations on local communities — are dictated by the Canada Marine Act, and therefore beyond the control of the port authority.

In order to fulfill our federal mandate, we need to ensure port infrastructure is in place to handle growing international trade. For more than a decade, there has been an incredible amount of investment in the port and the surrounding gateway to benefit all terminals, including grain terminals. As a result, we have seen record grain cargo through the port in recent years, and many terminals have invested to grow their operations.

In planning for future infrastructure investment, we consider independent forecasts and consult with industry. Many of the current projects under way are specifically to build capacity for the grain sector, and others will address the increasing demand for container trade. Interestingly, containers are used to ship a significant amount of grain so those container capacity projects will benefit the agricultural sector. Any fees that we may charge terminal operators for common-use infrastructure improvements are subject to consultation with those operators.

Our biggest challenge in the Vancouver area is that there is not enough industrial land for all this growth, and so we have to make the best use of what we have. That may require difficult choices with respect to a current tenant, but overall the Port of Vancouver will remain Canada’s gateway for agricultural exports to the world.

CORRECTION, Feb. 18: Typo fixed in paragraph 14 to replace “wouldn’t” with “couldn’t.”

UPDATE, Feb. 19: Updated to include statements from the Port of Vancouver and the Saskatchewan government plus further clarifications.

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That could lead to legislative changes with implications for farmers, grain companies and Canada’s grain customers.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada started reviewing the CGC and the grain act last March.

“Ultimately our goal is to have a set of legislative proposals to include as part of the (agriculture) minister’s next mandate,” Michelle Bielik, director of AAFC’s crop and supply chain policy division, told Keystone Agricultural Producers’ (KAP) advisory council meeting in Portage la Prairie on April 2.

The review will look at the CGC’s quality assurance program and ways to maintain it, Bielik said.

CGC governance will also be examined — something that has come up in previous reviews.

Grain companies want the grain act amended to end mandatory CGC outward inspection, replacing it with private inspectors overseen by the CGC.

The Western Grain Elevator Association (WGEA), which represents Canada’s biggest grain companies, says mandatory CGC outward inspection is redundant and costly.

But some farmers say making the CGC’s ‘Certificate Final’ optional — a grade and weight guaranteed by the CGC, backed by the Canadian government — will undermine Canada’s grain quality assurance system.

Viterra CEO Kyle Jeworski argued in favour of ending mandatory CGC outward inspection when speaking March 6 at the Canadian Crops Convention in Montreal.

“I think it’s important that we have the Canada Grain Act to better reflect our industry today and prepare for the future,” he said. “We need to remove unnecessary regulations. There are many examples — grain grading, weighing, inspection. There are things that add cost and delays in our industry.”

The Alberta Wheat Commission wants to replace the CGC’s current visual grading system with specifications.

The WGEA says it currently buys grain from farmers based mainly on CGC grades and sells to customers mainly on specs.

Prairie general farm organizations are wary of changes to the act or the CGC.

The CGC was created in 1912 to operate “in the interest of producers,” after years of farmer complaints about grain company and railway power.

“The reasons why the CGC was invented in the first place we haven’t seen change,” Todd Lewis, president of the Agricultural Producers of Saskatchewan said in an interview March 21, 2019. “All those issues (are) still there.

“I don’t think there has ever been a more important time to ensure that the CGC is able to perform outward inspections and have that data and samples available.”

KAP president Bill Campbell agrees.

“KAP believes the grain commission has a huge role to play in protecting farmers in the industry,” he said.

The post Year in Review: Expect CGC to be under policy microscope in 2020 appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Bayer has seen its share price tumble in the wake of its US$63 billion acquisition of Monsanto, which brought with it massive legal issues after more than 13,400 plaintiffs alleged the company’s glyphosate weedkiller caused cancer.

Bayer, which acquired Monsanto last year, says studies and regulators have deemed glyphosate and Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide safe for human use, but the German company has struggled to contain the reputational and legal fallout.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday that German farmers would stop using glyphosate eventually, a stance which is at odds with the Leverkusen-based company’s view.

Activist shareholder Elliott Associates said it welcomed Bayer’s new steps to improve supervision of litigation issues, as it revealed for the first time its holding of Bayer shares.

Bayer said it has hired U.S. lawyer John H. Beisner from Skadden, Arps, Slate Meagher + Flom LLP to advise the supervisory board on matters related to the glyphosate litigations, including trial tactics and mediation.

“His appointment is intended to add fresh and independent perspectives to the advice given to the board of management,” Bayer said in a statement.

“We are convinced that with his expertise, John H. Beisner will provide very valuable and concrete advice on the ongoing litigation as well as the mediation,” Bayer’s chairman Werner Wenning said in the statement.

Bayer also said a new supervisory board committee, comprised of eight supervisory board members, will consult with the board of management and make recommendations on litigation strategy.

The company appears to have changed its approach to litigation, from taking a “we will prevail, we will fight to the end” attitude to seeking a settlement more quickly as a way to reassure investors and employees, a person familiar with the discussion told Reuters on Wednesday.

Elliott Associates revealed that it holds Bayer shares and financial instruments equivalent to 1.1 billion euros (C$1.65 billion) worth of Bayer stock. Bayer’s market value is 52.2 billion euros.

It is the first time that Elliott has acknowledged holding a significant stake in the German company. Reuters last year reported that Elliott had amassed a stake of under three per cent, citing people familiar with the matter.

Elliott has a stake equivalent to 2.1 per cent of Bayer shares, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

“Elliott welcomes these steps, and is confident that today’s statement marks a step change in Bayer’s approach to addressing the legal challenges currently facing the company,” Elliott said in a separate statement.

Elliott said it believes that the creation of the special committee will provide a new level of oversight and a fresh perspective to a litigation strategy, which it said needs a radical overhaul.

Elliott also said Bayer could do more to maximize long-term value for all its stakeholders, saying the company had an opportunity to unlock more than 30 billion euros in value.

“Elliott looks forward to the company building upon today’s announcement, and making a credible commitment to the exploration of long-term value creative levers beyond the immediate litigation and governance enhancements,” it said.

Elliott wants Bayer to resolve its litigation issues as an immediate priority and is not pushing the company to pursue deeper structural changes right away, the source said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Edward Taylor and Arno Schuetze.

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Cigi, the Canadian International Grains Institute, on Tuesday announced the new funding model, plus a new governance model setting up a new 10-member board of directors representing its sponsor organizations.

Winnipeg-based Cigi said the new funding formula will see the three wheat commissions and seven grain firms provide $7.7 million over the next two years, representing the institute’s “core funding.”

The seven grain firms supporting Cigi will include:

• privately-held Winnipeg grain companies Richardson International, Paterson Grain and Parrish and Heimbecker;
• Viterra, the Canadian grain arm of commodity firm Glencore;
• the Canadian arm of U.S. agrifood firm Cargill;
• G3 Canada, the privatized former Canadian Wheat Board (CWB); and
• five farmer-owned grain terminal companies in Saskatchewan and Alberta, represented by the Inland Terminal Association of Canada.

The Alberta Wheat Commission, Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission and the Manitoba Wheat and Barley Growers Association will provide their shares of Cigi funding through their respective wheat checkoffs.

According to the wheat commissions in a separate statement, Cigi has asked the three commissions for funding that matches grain industry contributions over the next two crop years.

The commissions’ funding for Cigi replaces farmer checkoff funding the institute received through the Western Canadian Deduction. That checkoff, set up in 2012 by then-federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz following the deregulation of the CWB, sunsets on July 31, Cigi noted Tuesday.

“Today’s announcement represents the culmination of months of consultations involving the value chain,” JoAnne Buth, Cigi’s CEO since 2014, said in a release Tuesday. “We are extremely pleased that the provincial wheat commissions and the grain companies and handlers developed a consensus on a sustainable funding and governance model for Cigi.”

Where Cigi’s board had previously reflected its founding organizations, with members from the federal government, CWB and Canadian Grain Commission, the institute in 2013 reworked its governance to include representation from farmers as well as exporters, processors and others in the industry.

Under the latest funding and governance model, however, the first board will include five representatives from the wheat commissions and five representatives from the grain handler/exporter sector, elected June 29 at Cigi’s annual meeting.

Kevin Bender, a Sylvan Lake, Alta. farmer and the Alberta Wheat Commission’s vice-chair, will chair Cigi’s new board. Brent Watchorn, Richardson International’s executive vice-president for marketing, will be the new board’s vice-chair, while Jim Smolik, head of corporate affairs for Cargill Canada, will be board secretary.

New board members also include Drew Baker of the Manitoba Wheat and Barley Growers Association; Bill Gehl and Harvey Brooks of the Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission;  Gary Stanford of the Alberta Wheat Commission; Trent Rude of Viterra; Jean-Marc Ruest of Richardson International; and (unavailable for the photo above) Ward Weisensel of G3 Canada.

Three previous Cigi board members, including chair Murdoch MacKay and directors Henry Van Ankum and Lawrence Yakielashek, will remain with the board as observers “to provide continuity during the transition,” Cigi said.

Randy Johner and Jim Wilson, farmer members of Cigi’s previous board, will retire as directors.

Bender, in Tuesday’s release, hailed the outgoing board members’ “foresight and determination… in guiding Cigi through a period of significant industry change.”

The new board, he said, comes to an organization with “a long and distinguished history of working on behalf of farmers and industry to promote and demonstrate the quality and functionality of Canadian grain in international markets.”

Cigi, set up as a not-for-profit body in 1972 with federal government and farmer funding via the CWB, is now billed as an independent organization working with field crop value chains in Canada and internationally.

The institute today provides applied research, training and technical support services to drive development and use of Canadian crops — including wheat, durum, barley, canola and other oilseeds, pulses and other special crops such as canaryseed and mustard — for domestic and export markets.

Cigi, which still also gets federal funding via the AgriMarketing and AgriInnovation programs, broadened its activities in recent years to include pulse crop product and market development.

That pulse crop work, Cigi said, is now backed by the Canadian Agricultural Adaptation Program, Pulse Canada, Alberta Innovates Bio Solutions, Saskatchewan Pulse Growers, Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers, Manitoba’s Agri-Food Research and Development Initiative (Manitoba Agriculture) and Warburtons. — AGCanada.com Network

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Agriculture Minister Oneil Carlier on Thursday announced the appointment of a new eight-member board for the provincial Agriculture Financial Services Corp., (AFSC), which has been handled by an interim board since last summer.

The previous board of directors was dismissed in June after the province’s chief internal auditor filed a report raising concerns about oversight of senior executive expenses and procurement practices at AFSC, mainly during the period from 2011 through 2015.

Three unnamed senior AFSC executives were also “relieved from active duty,” the province said at the time.

“As a board, our priority is to make sure AFSC management continues to keep pace with the evolving needs of agribusiness and conducts its operations in a transparent and accountable manner that reflects the expectations of Albertans,” Jennifer Wood, the new board’s chair, said in a release Thursday.

Wood is an Edmonton-based agrologist, partner in a private equity holding company focused on agribusiness, and co-operator of her family’s cattle ranch. She has 15 years of board experience in a “variety of roles, across sectors,” the province said.

Directors on the new board also include:

• Jerry Bouma, an agrifood management consultant in Edmonton;
• Gordon Cove, the Red Deer-based former CEO of the province’s now-dissolved Alberta Livestock and Meat Agency (ALMA);
• ag coach and farmer Peter Galloway of Fort Saskatchewan;
• Jo-Ann Hall, a former provincial assistant deputy agriculture minister, from Stony Plain;
• Harvey Hagman, president of Hagman Cattle Co., at Mayerthorpe;
• chartered professional accountant Anna Harder of Camrose; and
• Kiren Singh of Canmore, a financial executive with background in the energy and ag sectors.

In the new board members’ biographies, the province noted most of them also come to the table with years of board governance experience.

“The new board will provide essential oversight to help ensure that AFSC’s programs and services are delivered effectively and continue to meet the needs of rural Alberta,” Carlier said.

All eight new board members were chosen through an open recruitment process, the province emphasized in its release. — AGCanada.com Network

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