McCain deal hikes potato growers’ pay

PRESQUE ISLE – The Agricultural Bargaining Council and McCain Foods USA Inc. have reached a contract agreement for the coming potato season that includes an increase to farmers.

“Overall, it’s a strong 10-cent [per hundredweight] increase to the grower,” Vernon Delong, executive director of the bargaining council, said Monday. “After 10 days … [of negotiations] it was the best we could accomplish.”

McCain operates a french-fry processing plant in Easton.

Officials at McCain also were happy with the outcome.

“We are pleased that we could reach a contract settlement with ABC and believe the negotiations this year ended up on a positive note for both parties,” Laurie Jecha-Beard, McCain’s vice president for agriculture at the company’s Oak Brook, Ill., headquarters, said in a joint press release with ABC.

That is a far cry from last year, when, after protracted negotiations, a settlement was reached only to be shelved by McCain.

An arbitrator had approved a 50-cent-per-hundredweight proposal from ABC, but the arrangement was nonbinding, and three weeks later, the two sides signed a deal for an 11-cent increase.

McCain had offered a 10-cent increase and said it did not plan to follow the arbitrator’s recommendation.

Growers capitulated amid rumors that McCain might cut demand.

This year, Delong said, farmers were anxious to hold onto what they got last year. In addition, he said the trend for Maine farmers was already set since McCain’s negotiations this year with growers in Western states had netted 10-cent increases.

He said the 10-cent deal was good, especially at a time when worldwide demand for french fries is down.

In its March 20 issue, The North American Potato Market News reported that french-fry exports are 16 percent lower than they had been for 2001-02, and that global french-fry demand is weak.

McCain recently announced that it was laying off 125 employees in June at its Burley, Idaho, plant and reducing shifts because of weak demand for frozen potato products, the Associated Press reported last week.

“The french-fry market is retreating; our exports [of french fries] are retreating,” Delong said. “The war doesn’t help and the economy’s depressed.

“If we can get a dime and maintain or increase our volume, we’ll fare as well as anybody,” he said.

Jecha-Beard said by telephone Monday that while product demand plays a role in negotiations, it isn’t the only factor.

“We have a competitive settlement with the situation we have today in the marketplace,” she said.