Farmscape for October 22, 2009   (Episode 3327)

The ballots have been circulated and the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board's 2010 Board of Directions Election is now underway.

Mail-in ballots for the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board's 2010 board of directors election are now in the hands of producers.

A total of nine candidates, including three incumbents and six new candidates, are vying for six seats on the board.

Sask Pork general manager Neil Ketilson explains elections are held every two years.

Clip-Neil Ketilson-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board:
First of all anybody that sells one hog per year is eligible to vote.

Any producer that's out there is certainly invited and encouraged to vote and run for the board if they'd like.

What we do is we have what we call hog votes.

Any organization that sells one hog a year would get one vote and so, if they sell a thousand hogs a year, they would get a thousand votes under the hog situation.

What we do is we elect three people on the board of directors, half of the board, based on hogs votes and we take all the hog votes that are in the province and those three people that are selected based on hog votes would be elected first.

Then what we do is every producer that's eligible would also get what we call a people vote.

They would cast their ballots for the different people that are running and so we select the other people based on that.

It's a very effective way of accommodating the large, the small producers as well as all of those in between and it's worked very very well for us.

The new board will be announced during Sask Pork's annual general meeting in November held in conjunction with Saskatchewan Pork industry Symposium in Saskatoon.

Ketilson notes the new board will meet within 30 days after that to elect a new chair.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       * Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council