Farmers of North America
Farmers of North America (FNA) was established by a Saskatchewan farm family in March, 1998, with the sole goal of creating more profitability for all farmers who join the organization. At first there were only seven farmers, no tangible benefits, and a dream of profitable farming. But from those humble beginnings arose an organization that today encompasses millions of acres and thousands of producers across the continent, with a request on our plate to establish operations in Brazil.
The mission of FNA is simple, clear and unique: To Improve Farm Profitability. FNA is achieving this mission by aiming to: reduce costs for member farmers (the input costs side); improve revenue earned on outputs (the marketing side) and, whenever necessary, to advocate for regulatory change where existing regulations suppress farmers’ ability to make profit.
Note that our mission is NOT to improve farm incomes. That would be too broad because it could include, for example, lobbying governments to provide income support payments. Such payments can increase farm incomes but they do not improve profitability. Instead, FNA believes that farmers should be able to reasonably expect the same margins of profit as businesses in other industry sectors, in terms of return on investment in the areas of Capital, Management and Labour.
It must also be made clear that FNA is non-partisan. We are not a policy organization, and we do not involve ourselves in policy debates except when particular policies or proposed policies have a direct impact on farm profitability.
FNA is the first and currently the only organization with the representation of farmers’ collective economic interests foremost in mind, even though such groups have been present in other business sectors and in politics for decades. The absence of such an organization in the history of Canadian farming, coupled with a rise in corporate control of input costs has led to a gradual and devastating decline of farmers’ profit margins and a drastic erosion of North America’s farming community. This has pitted individual producers against huge, multinational input conglomerates whose exertion of power upon farmers has resulted in an uphill battle for producers where whenever they get paid more for their product, the input companies increase their price at the same or higher rate. However, when commodity prices have decreased, input costs have not declined to stay in-step with farmers. The result: company coffers squeezing every last penny out of farmers’ already razor-thin margins. FNA exists to correct this situation and is making progress in this effort every day through a myriad of initiatives, focusing on major inputs like Fertilizer, Fuel, Machinery, Crop Protection Products and Livestock Supplies.
Achieving the status of a stable, thriving organization has not come easy. In the early years the only benefits we could offer members derived from businesses who themselves wanted to be part of the farm income solution. These were our first Preferred Suppliers, most of whom are with us to this day. They include fine national businesses such as Acklands-Grainger and NAPA as well as strong regional organizations such as Fyfe Parts and Dundee Securities. Without our Preferred Suppliers, FNA would not be as strong as it is today. However, we knew that Preferred Suppliers alone could not make the kinds of contributions to input cost reduction required to have a meaningful impact on individual farm profitability. To achieve this required a new approach.
The FNA System is unique. We are widely known as a volume buying organization, but volume is only one part of the equation. FNA has built a system that consists of six primary methods of returning profit to farmers through reduced input costs: Preferred Suppliers, International Sourcing, Direct-From-Manufacturer Pricing, Volume Buying, Regulatory & Policy Application and Private Labeling.
As we started the process of bringing competitive pricing to agricultural inputs, the resistance we faced was greater, more aggressive and more expensive than we ever imagined. It became clear that the enormous corporations that control the agricultural inputs did not want to see farmers organizing themselves into a business organization that could potentially make the marketplace more competitive. Farmers collectively gaining market power has forced some of these huge companies to give up some of their profits (about $700 billion dollars in North America). One of FNA’s many success stories in this regard is the Glyphosate Own Use Import Program. When FNA started the program, prices in the Canadian market ranged from $6.50 to $10.50 per liter. FNA brought it in at $4.25 per liter. In 18 months, 20% of the Canadian glyphosate market had moved to our imported product and the Canadian manufacturers were forced to respond by reducing prices for everyone, saving Canadian farmers over $120 million.
FNA has proven that farmers can win, even against the most powerful corporations in the world. We have shown that there is a battle plan for the future that can have and has had a direct positive impact on farm incomes. FNA now represents over 12 million acres of land and 7,500 farm families, and we’re growing by adding new members and benefits every day. We provide reduced cost inputs ranging from oil to welders. We have an entire department of professional agrologists dedicated to serving FNA members, a professional team to recruit new members, crop protection specialists of our own and some of the best international negotiators, government regulatory experts, and corporate development specialists in the country. And we have programs to build for the future, with our entire concentration on that single reason we exist: To improve farm profitability.