NSW Farmers’ annual conference last week rejected a push for the association to endorse Grain Producers Australia (GPA) as the national representative grains body. Richard Clark from the North Star district council moved an urgency motion on Thursday morning which was voted down after lengthy debate. Delegates did, however, vote in support of the second half of the motion, opting to participate in the upcoming National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) grains policy. Mr Clark said the urgency motion came as a result of the closed NSW Farmers grains forum last Tuesday. Parkes district council member Mark Swift spoke in favour of the resolution, telling the conference he was young enough to have “never seen a functioning peak body”. “We’ve been caught in a quagmire for so long,” he said. “The vast majority of the other State-based organisations are on board with this and they are waiting for a clear direction from NSW Farmers. “We really need to get on board and get something functioning.” But NSW Farmers grains committee chairman Mark Hoskinson said the current GPA structure did not fit with NSW Farmers’ representative model. “It’s going to be a can of worms; it will lose us members and it’s detrimental to the ongoing negotiations we have with the NFF and the other States,” he said. “We can only take our policies to GPA and drop them on the table, we don’t get to sit in the room and carry them forward. “We need to have that hands-on approach with national policy, we need members of this association at the table.” Mungindi delegate Rob Eassie said GPA was already the national representative body and NSW Farmers needed to endorse the organisation. “They’re doing the job, they’re doing it on our behalf – they’re doing it without us contributing to the cost of running the organisation,” he said. “This (motion) simply says as an organisation we endorse the current (representative organisation) but ... we continue to attend the NFF forum and discuss the progress or the evolution of a national policy.” Pottinger delegate Xavier Martin (pictured) spoke against the resolution, saying the urgency motion was “an attempt to circumvent many of the key principles that this association stands for”. “I’m old enough to see and know what a functioning national representative structure looks like, unlike the previous delegate Mr Swift, and I can tell Mr Swift that what’s on the board in front of us will not serve as a functioning national representative organisation.”