So I think if everybody s putting their minds to making these processes somewhat more formal and at least having some basic guidelines to go by, that could be very useful. And if that indeed is where this legislative process ends up, maybe a lot of people will be putting a lot of thought into that, which I think could be useful. My next observation deals with appointments to stakeholder advisory processes. This is a key decision and a tricky issue. I think there are certainly ways to do it that are better than others.
Membership has to be balanced.
Key categories that often get left out should be remembered. Just as a for instance, farm workers and labor interests within agribusiness as a whole, rarely if ever have been represented in any of the processes I ve been involved in. So I think we have to be really careful about whether all users and all people affected are being considered. Also, in terms of farmer membership, per se, in the processes, I think it s extremely important that the full range of farm types, farm size, and types of farming systems be represented in the farmer input into a stakeholder group or process. I think too often we wind up with representatives of particular organizations or commodity groups without an eye towards really representing the full range of types of farmers.