Cooperative’s Chief to Face Rice Growers : Dismal Year Resulted in Bills Rather Than Checks

Distinctly disappointed members of the Rice Growers Assn. of California, the state’s largest milling cooperative with 1,600 growers, will have plenty of time today to voice their feelings about a crop year that resulted in bills rather than anticipated checks.

The cooperative’s new chief executive, Michael Cook, is expecting RGA’s annual meeting in Sacramento to run more than three hours--allowing plenty of time for comment after he completes his review of the dismal year past and the outlook for the new crop.

Cook, who took over the cooperative’s management last September after the resignation of James Errecarte, has sought to improve the organization’s information system and recast its marketing strategy to avoid a repeat of the disastrous 1984-85 crop sale.

Runs Second to Rival

For the second straight year, RGA--for years California’s predominant rice marketer--has been running second in returns to its members to its smaller cross-town rival in West Sacramento, the 900-member Farmers Rice Cooperative.

Last year, Rice Growers’ members received about 50 cents less per 100-pound sack of rice than their Farmers Rice colleagues.

This year, to the shock of many RGA members, the final results of marketing their crop resulted in a bill in the mail instead of the expected check. (This meant that the usual cash advances that the cooperative paid to them to produce the crop exceeded what the crop earned.)

Because of a strategy that paid a $2-a-sack premium to growers of the long-grain rice favored by U.S. consumers--a market long dominated by the Southern rice belt--RGA found itself awash in long-grain rice. Sale of that rice failed to cover the premium; this meant that the majority of the cooperative’s membership, who grew the state’s specialties--the medium- and short-grain varieties favored abroad--subsidized those growers from what their crops brought in.

The final price for all varieties came to about $1.50 a sack less than received by Farmers Rice members, whose annual meeting Nov. 26 should contrast strongly with RGA’s today--and for the second year in a row.

Meanwhile, Cook has held five regional meetings with Rice Growers members to explain the causes of the disappointing year, which he attributes to a number of one-time factors.