Photo: flickr/Dean Shareski

In this interview Darrin Qualman explores the history of farmer co-operatives in Saskatchewan and more broadly the prairie regions of Canada, focusing specifically on the collective wheat pools and the federally regulated Canadian Wheat Board. Qualman is an author and community activist, who has worked extensively with Canada’s National Farmers Union, while also working internationally as a board member of Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group).

Qualman addresses some of the context and history of the rural co-operative movement in Saskatchewan, pointing to the important role that agricultural co-operatives play in illustrating a concrete alternative to corporate capitalism. 

Also, Qualman reflects on the recent battles to sustain co-operative farmer wheat pools in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta, as farmer-controlled, democratic co-operatives. And details the Conservative attack on the Canadian Wheat Board, articulating a clear clash of visions in Canada’s prairies between the neoliberal Conservative free market ideology and the co-operative farmers movement, that has long standing socialist roots.

After visiting Saskatchewan in fall 2013 for a series of events to launch Le fond de l’air est rouge, a zine on the Québec student strike, travelling on buses between cities, my mind was immediately taken by the major presence of co-operative institutions and also the many stories that people shared about the history of progressive farmers co-operatives in the region. This grassroots interaction with activists telling a people’s history of Saskatchewan’s farmers co-operative movement was motivating and inspiring, as this story illustrates tangible possibilities for economic alternatives to the social violence of neoliberal capitalism that is currently ruling both the Canadian economy and political class.

This interview was originally recorded at CKUT fm in Montréal and broadcast on Free City Radio, below is a full transcription of the conversation.

 

Good day Darrin, can you highlight some of the key elements to the history and significance of Saskatchewan’s co-operative movement?

One of the problems that we have in telling this story, is that it’s a rise and fall story. There is a deep, long history here of co-operatives, but a great deal of this is in the past. People like myself have spent the last 20-some years fighting against the destruction of these agricultural co-ops. At one time the coverage the co-ops had was amazing, they processed most of the dairy products, handled most of the grains, but many have been destroyed. Not sure that this is the story you want to tell?

 

Well it’s an important story to tell, so maybe if you could start by describing the depth and the scope of co-operatives historically in Saskatchewan from your understanding.

Could you give us some sense of the context in which co-operatives formed and the important roles that they played in society?

Starting in the early 20th century, farmers, labour organizations and many people in communities across Saskatchewan worked very hard and were very successful in building a very large and integrated co-operative structure in Saskatchewan. By the time you get to the post war period, into the 1970s/1980s, you get to the point where most of the food processed and produced in Saskatchewan, and indeed western Canada, was handled by co-operatives.

An example from that time is that around two thirds of the dairy products were gathered and produced in co-operative dairy processing facilities. Also the dominant grain handling and gathering companies on the prairies were the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, the Manitoba Wheat pool and the Alberta Wheat Pool, parallel to other farmer owned co-operatives in the region. These co-operative flour mills also had oilseed crushers, which would take things like canola seed and then produce things like canola oil and margarine. Also there was a co-op retail sector and many of those stores are still there and remain a dominant player in food retail.

Really the emerging food production and food processing system in western Canada built up with the co-operative structures playing major roles, in gathering, handling, processing and even retailing food and a lot of farmers were paid by those co-ops and also participated democratically in those co-ops.

Also the co-ops played an important policy role in regards to Canadian agriculture policy. Also now we should mention the Canadian Wheat Board, which isn’t exactly a farmer co-operative, but a farmer controlled gain marketer, that handled grain not just in Canada, but extended the reach of farmers locally to be help to sell grain internationally.

So really there was a very important, interlocking history of co-operatives in Saskatchewan and a solid effort to link those co-operatives together as part of a really proud co-operative history in Saskatchewan and in the prairies.

When you mention the role of farmers deciding the future of those co-operatives, can you talk about how these farming co-operatives were run? Were they through general assemblies for example? What sort of democratic structures were part of this co-operative process?

Well, I will talk about one co-operative that I knew and also directly participated in, the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool. Each small town — and there are many along the railways here in Saskatchewan — has a wheat pool elevator and each of those elevators was run by a local wheat pool committee composed of elected farmers, chosen representatives from among the local farm families.

Those committees held regular meetings to discuss and share information what was happening within the local pool system, also within the larger pool system and within that there were policy making bodies that would create resolutions locally to bring to the annual meeting of the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, where delegates from many of the local committees would come together to make major decisions and vote together.

It was a system that really strived to reflect the interests of the farming communities involved, and there were democratic mechanisms that went from the grassroots to the highest levels of the wheat pool structure. Also these were mechanisms that would organize and educate local farmers, working in many ways to proliferate co-operative values within farming communities, to build a co-operative spirit and co-operative movement.

When you talk about co-operative values can you describe and give a sense as to why farming families chose to be a part of these co-operative structures in Saskatchewan. Also can you describe the historical context that brought people into this structure of organization?

Some of the important realities at play were that farm families were being exploited before the co-operatives.

Also many of the things that farmers produce, such as eggs, or poultry or dairy products generally don’t keep well, so you have to move those things to the market very quickly and if you are dealing with companies that makes money by paying the farmers as little as possible to sell for as much as possible, the farmer are then in a very bad bargaining position.

So to some extent the formation of the co-ops was about farmers stepping up to the next level in having autonomy to market and distribute their goods on their terms, to not just be in a position to be forced to take the prices offered by distribution companies.

In another sense the co-ops illustrated a sense of community, the idea that a farmer didn’t want to succeed at the expense of their neighbour. Co-operatives were about establish exchanges that allowed for respect between farmers, there was a real commitment to that within Canadian Wheat Board and also in the Wheat Pools, based on the principle that farmers who produce similar materials at similar times should be paid similar amounts and not have to compete against their neighbours, the farmers were aiming to win together, not individually.

How important do you feel these historical co-operative structures are to the contemporary health of society on Saskatchewan? I understand that there is a huge challenge in sustaining these long standing co-ops today, but what do you feel the echoes are to this historical co-operative reality within the contemporary context of Saskatchewan today?

I think that at one point, at the peak of co-operative movement, it illustrated a great way as to how people could actually directly participate in shaping the mechanisms of an economy, all the way to governmental policy.

In Saskatchewan’s recent history you had an interlocking network of progressive institutions, that in a way even included the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), but most important were the co-operatives at the local levels. Also there was the National Farmers Union, focused on policy and education, also workers unions that supported the farmer co-operatives and also an expanding network of credit unions much more locally oriented than big corporate banks.

Really this was an interlocking set of political, economic and material entities that to a very significant extent developed our society in Saskatchewan. You asked about the echoes of this history today, well a great part of the economy, the infrastructure and the identity in Saskatchewan was constructed through this co-operative history.

Most often when we hear about Canadian history, for example in high school educational text books, or “official” Canadian history as projected by the CBC for example, this important co-operative history is not often a focus, can you reflect on that?

We don’t do a very good job of talking about histories of counter models to capitalism. Today the co-operative movement has come under real fire in North America because it’s a counter model to the dominant model of corporate capitalism. Recognizing that there is an attack and that the situation is urgent for many long standing co-operative institutions is important.

Today there is a mainstream narrative on the economy that prevails, as an economic system dominated by big corporations, with people in a passive roles as consumers, however missing is the idea that people can take a more active and constructive roles in the economy and society through co-operatives.

Earlier you mentioned the Canadian Wheat Board, an institution at ground zero for a very important battle that has recently taken place under the Conservative parliamentary majority.

Can you talk about the importance of this battle over the Canadian Wheat Board, but also the organization’s history and offer any thoughts about what has been lost?

The Canadian Wheat Board, as a grain marketer and public institution, as well as the Wheat Pools as co-operative grain marketers, all came about largely because of various market failures in the early 20th century, corporate exploitation, collapses in markets and other types of free market failures. Farmers worked with federal and provincial governments, but also through co-operatives, to really explore economic alternatives to a set of failed systems that were dominated by grain companies.

These co-operative systems that were constructed worked very well for many, many decades, but recently large corporations have really waged a war against those entities and we have most recently lost the Canadian Wheat Board for purely ideological reasons.

Those of us who were working to save the Wheat Board constantly challenged the government to hold a farmer vote, to see what farmers really wanted, but the government simply refused to do that.

I think that the Wheat Board would have won that vote, the vast majority of farm families would have voted to keep their Canadian Wheat Board, but the Conservatives moved to scrap the institution, leaving farmers at the mercy of large global grain traders.

A similar pattern has played out within the co-operatives, we went from a time when most of the food was gathered and processed by co-operatives, to losing those co-operatives one after another, the dairy co-operatives for example were destroyed, in their place now are large transnational corporations. The co-operative grain handlers were destroyed, privatized and replaced also with transnational companies, so it really has been a time of destruction for the co-operative movement in western Canada.

Often the Conservative party presents itself as a party that at its origins represent the people and political interests of western Canada. What you are describing is the opposite, can you talk about that contradiction?

Unfortunately in politics the lines of interest don’t always run parallel, and rural people in western Canada can be questioned in some of the choices that they made, but I think that in general the vast majority of farmers wish that the Canadian Wheat Board still existed. I hear from many farmers, even those who voted Conservative, they didn’t really think that the Conservatives would destroy the Canadian Wheat Board.

Can we talk generally speaking about the importance of understanding this history of co-operatives?

My context to this question is my interaction and involvement with progressive grassroots movements really crystallizing around the major anti-corporate globalization protests, sparked by the protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle in 1999 and also here in Québec against the Summit of the Americas in 2001 where the hemispheric free trade agreement, the FTAA, was being proposed and negotiated, those mobilizations against neoliberal capitalism were central to the shaping of my political orientation.

I would say that most people I grew up with politically, people from my generation, who joined these protests, don’t have a deep sense of the history of co-operatives in western Canada, although clearly there are important exceptions.

As time has gone on, I have gotten the opportunity to talk to people, long time activists in your region about this co-operative history and gotten some sense of the economic models that existed, which illustrate concrete alternatives to capitalism. Often I feel that progressives romanticize co-operative movements in other parts of the world, Latin America specifically, and although the context is different here I feel people don’t talk a great deal about this living history of struggle around co-operatives here.

Can you reflect on this and talk about the importance of inter-generational learning between progressive movements from different times?

I think that there are incredible lessons to be learned here, in terms of how to build an integrated, citizen controlled very successful co-operative economic mechanisms and institutions, but also the ways that those structures were destroyed and attacked, all because we are going to have to build similarly co-operative structures again.

One of the things that people are failing to really address is the deindustrialization of North America. As it becomes clear that local production is important and that we will need to work to make more things locally again. A lot of foods that were previously produced and packaged here in Saskatchewan, isn’t done here any more, as is similar in different sectors, as corporations are decamping from North America.

We have all seen and thought about the pictures of Detroit, that same process is playing out less visibly in many places and here in western Canada, where we used to have a much more decentralized economy, with a lot of manufacturing, food production and more vibrant local communities.

Today we are relying more and more on tar sands and energy production to form the basis for our economy which is a disaster for our communities and for the environment. We need to think again about what we can produce locally and in order to make that switch back to the local we are going to need to learn from this history of co-operatives.

There is a certain vision of economics that is pronounced today in Canada, which in many ways echoes a political slogan that was popular with the right wing at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, which was that we were witnessing “the end of history” with the fall of the Berlin wall, that any proposal for alternative societies, or alternatives to contemporary corporate capitalism, were painted as ridiculous.

Any reflections on this slogan in relation to a recent shift toward an interest in co-operatives and how it relates to what you have been talking about?

Some people were overly triumphalist, naive also, in proclaiming a corporate capitalist victory of some sorts. But really anyone who perhaps believed in this ultimate victory of neoliberal capitalism was forced to question things in 2008/2009 during the financial crisis and the major problems of the global economy. I think that we really need to now pursue of number of new ideas and models in relation to the economy.

Also we need to learn from these very successful collective models that citizens put in place in the past, institutions that have largely been destroyed by corporate capitalism. So this is a time of economic uncertainty, but also this is a time to work together to re-engineer this economy in serious ways, toward co-operatives, the current model is clearly not working.

This interview is included in the latest print edition of Free City Radio, a new seasonal zine publication extending from a radio program on CKUT fm in Montreal that explores topics of importance to social justice movements.

Photo: flickr/Dean Shareski

Stefan Christoff

Stefan Christoff is a musician, community organizer and host of Free City Radio that airs weekly on multiple stations across Canada. X: @spirodon / Instagram: @spirochristoff