By Alice McFarlane

Grain commission dealing with farmer complaints about Cargill

Nov 2, 2021 | 3:20 PM

MELFORT, Sask. – The Canadian Grain Commission (CGC) has been dealing with complaints from farmers who delivered grain to Cargill and had not been paid.

Since the middle of September, CGC said 23 producers reported they were concerned about slow payments from the grain company.

CGC Head of Communications Remi Gosselin said they met with Cargill’s executive leadership team to discuss the problem.

“We learned that they were experiencing difficulties in the implementation of new payments software, and more particularly, having difficulty reconciling older files with new ones,” Gosselin said.

Gosselin said based on the information he has received it appears to be impacting farmer customers across Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.

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Cargill had communicated with producers that a special payment process had been implemented on an interim basis. Gosselin said some farmers were not happy with this so CGC is encouraging producers to contact them directly if they’re experiencing slow payment.

“Our experience has been that if they contact us, we can secure payment relatively quickly,” Gosselin said. “Obviously, this is the frustrating situation for producers.”

Gosselin said the commission has requested a follow up meeting with Cargill to get to the bottom of these latest issues as they want producers to get paid as soon as possible.

“Clearly, when we get complaints of slow payments, we take those very seriously. So obviously, it’s very frustrating for producers, we personally thank them for their patience and our experience has been that when they contact us we can get them paid relatively quickly.”

If producers are not getting answers from Cargill, Gosselin said his experience is as soon as CGC gets involved payments are set in motion.

“We’ve got assurances from Cargill that they’re working on the problem,” he said. “This is only temporary in nature and producers will get paid.”

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alice.mcfarlane@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @farmnewsNOW