MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Falklands' wool cooperative initiative controversy
Speaking on the Falkland Islands Radio Station's mid-day news programme on Thursday, Councillor Dr.Andrea Clausen, the Chair of the Islands' Development Board, said that there had been no pressure put on farmers to join in an initiative aimed at cutting out the middle men between Falkland Islands wool producers and the world-wide buyers of their product.
Despite some opposition from farmers, the Falkland Islands Development Board meeting on August 7th, approved funding of up to £130,000 to enable the immediate establishment of a Farmers' Cooperative, which would have as its ultimate goal the direct marketing of the Islands annual wool clip of some 1,940,050 kgs.
"Nobody is being pressured into anything", said Mrs.Clausen, who commented that there had been what she called "a great debate", but assured listeners that nobody from the Falkland Islands Government (FIG) or the Development Board (FIDC) had been lobbying farmers.
The decision to support the setting up of a co-operative and the debate which has led up to this point, both stem from a document entitled The Wool Review and Strategic Plan, written by wool marketing consultant, David Lambert, who visited the Islands for the first time in March of this year at the invitation of FIDC, visiting again during the annual Farmers' Week in July.
Lambert is a former senior trader for Modiano, who deal in wool tops, greasy and scoured wool and currently are the biggest single buyers of the Falklands wool crop, taking some 70%.
Some 40% of the Falkland Islands wool clip still goes to Bradford in the north of England for core-testing ? the process by which its suitability for various uses is determined - despite the fact that this city's dominance of the wool trade in the fifties and sixties has long since passed, with the principal markets for this product now in Continental Europe and the principal processing centres in Asia.
The Strategic Plan recognises this global shift and envisages that the Farmers' Cooperative will gain scale over time to market, distribute and sell wool for its members, many of whom currently sell their clip through agencies based in the UK. It also claims that the saving of the agents' commission currently paid on wool sales, estimated at some 3.5%, will eventually cover the Cooperative's costs, leaving the majority of the benefits to be received by farms on the sale of their own wool.
Councillor Clausen said that one of the problems with the present system, which would be alleviated by the Cooperative, lay with the delays some farmers experienced in receiving money from agents after the sale of their annual wool clip. There was evidence, she said, that in some cases farmers did not receive payment for the wool shorn between November and February till the following November, a situation she described as "awful" and one which led to farmers experiencing considerable cash flow problems.
David Lambert, the author of the Wool Review and Strategic Plan, is scheduled to visit the Islands again for two or three weeks in September to fine-tune the details of the proposed Cooperative with farmers.
John Fowler (Mercopress) Stanley
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