VFF conflict: Board cuts levies to $650 in bid to keep chicken grower members

All Victorian Farmers Federation membership fees are being reviewed after disgruntled chicken meat growers left the lobby group.

Stepping in: VFF vice president Danyel Cucinotta is trying to convince chicken meat growers to stay with the federation.

The Victorian Farmers Federation has made a last ditch bid to win back about 70 of its 100 chicken-meat grower members, offering to cut their levies to $650 a year, compared to the average $3000 they were paying.

In October most of the state’s largest chicken-meat growers announced they were flying the VFF coop to form their own Victorian Chicken Growers Council, giving them full control of about $300,000 in levies to employ the legal and financial experts they needed to negotiate growing contracts with the nation’s corporate processors.

Prior to leaving, former VFF Chicken Meat Group president Vincent Croston and his vice-president Owen Shaw had proposed a compromise whereby growers retained the levies, while passing through $650 to the VFF for cross-commodity work.

But at the time the proposal was rejected by VFF president Emma Germano and her chief executive Jane Lovell, who argued it would breach the federation’s constitution.

Mr Shaw said “I thought it was a pretty good deal. They don’t lose face and retain our members”.

After failing to reach a compromise Mr Croston and Shaw wrote a letter to all VFF Chicken Meat Group members calling on them to stop paying levies to the VFF and instead divert them to the new VCGC.

Ms Germano responded by issuing letters to Mr Croston and chicken meat group members on October 27:

WARNING Mr Croston and his team to “cease and desist” from making or producing any statement, documents, suggestions, or inferences, that the VCGC has any power or influence in relation to any VFF member, membership payment or arrangement.

STATING that as elections within the Chicken Meat Council have not occurred in line with the VFF constitution, all positions have been declared vacant by the returning officer of the VFF, CEO Jane Lovell (effectively terminating Mr Croston as Chicken Meat Group president).

ANNOUNCING an audit of the Chicken Meat Group, due to what Ms Germano said were “alleged failures in member consultation”, “problematic” governance, “conflicts of interest of elected VFF representatives” and “improper use of VFF information”.

The dispute and threats led to a special meeting of VFF directors at which two sources told The Weekly Times Ms Germano was told to sit down and listen, as they tried to de-escalate the conflict.

Mr Shaw said VFF vice-president Danyel Cucinotta and fellow board member and Pig Group president Tim Kingma approached the group after the meeting in a bid to bring them back into the VFF fold.

But Ms Cucinotta said Mr Kingma’s and her involvement was at the behest of Ms Germano.

“For Emma it was stressful and becoming personal, and she requested I (and Tim) become involved,” Ms Cucinotta said. “We have a good relationship with the intensive sector.”

Since then the board has pushed ahead with an offer to meet the chicken meat growers’ original call to cap their levies at $650.

On November 11 Ms Lovell sent an email to chicken meat growers stating: “For your information the VFF Finance and Audit Committee this morning supported management’s recommendation for a stay be put on collection of Chicken Meat Group Members levies, over and above $650 (ex GST) for the current membership year, until the outcome of the membership structure and fee review”.

“This review is expected to be completed by March 2022 and will commence shortly with a survey of members, lapsed members and non-members.

“The $650 threshold represents the average annual membership fee for the VFF Pig Members and is deemed an appropriate benchmark.”

Mr Croston said he would “never say never” on returning to the VFF, but ultimately that was up to each grower and “what comes out of the review in March”.

“But under the present leadership I don’t think many people will be interested in coming back.”