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The Canadian Federation of Agriculture Board of Directors met in early April. The organization has been making some significant changes from an operations and staff perspective in the last year in order to optimize its membership offerings and representation of farmers. CFA now has a stronger staff complement to deal with policy, advocacy and government relations given the extensive consultations, requests, committee appearances and lobbying efforts that are expected of the organization. CFA has also stepped up its membership and partnership recruitment and engagement. Regarding membership, the Board has struck a new membership fee structure review committee mandated to engage with prospective members, develop recommendations to support increased access to CFA membership, particularly for small and large organizations.
This committee’s mandate will focus on finding a new fee structure for very small commodity organizations that cannot currently afford the base fee for CFA membership, while also exploring how to reduce the high-end of CFA membership fees in a fashion that attracts new members while ensuring equitable treatment with existing members.
CFA staff also shared an update regarding the AGM in February and the upcoming summer meeting in Whitehorse in July. Given that the summer meeting occurs alongside the Federal Provincial Territorial Agriculture Ministers meeting, CFA hosts a roundtable with the Ministers to discuss the emerging issues facing the sector. As discussed at the board meeting, the desired topic for the 2024 roundtable will be data in agriculture. The direction, as always, will be on the importance of focusing on how governments and producers can work together to inform effective policymaking and on-farm decision-making.
