THE Grain Growers Association will pay its proposed new committee members a retainer instead of just a sitting fee and reimbursement of their expenses.
GGA chairman John Eastburn said the company was proposing to pay about nine committee members across five states on a fortnightly retainer.
Mr Eastburn said their payments would be a modest retainer but "not enough to live on".
As reported in The Weekly Times, GGA is planning to abolish its democratically elected regional committee in favour of an autonomous advisory group appointed by the board and known as the Agricultural Reference Group of Australia.
The move has angered some regional committee members, with Condobolin farmer Peter Mooney labelling it an attempt to get "yes men" to the board.
In a letter to The Weekly Times this week, Mr Mooney said the existing regional committee had met only once since GGA's annual general meeting last year and had been allowed only 45 minutes to discuss the organisation's matters.
Mr Eastburn acknowledged the move to abolish the regional committee was contentious but GGA had "moved from a staff of five to a bigger company with greater staff" after the acquisitions of the Kondinin Group, BRI Australia and Agrecon.
He said GGA would abolish Kondinin's 50-member advisory panel as well as the 21-member GGA regional committee because it could not sustain such a large advisory group.
He said GGA would employ nine ARGA members across the five grain-growing states, with six probably covering Victoria, NSW and Queensland.
But the company would reassess the numbers if the workload became too great.
Mr Eastburn would not disclose how much each member would be paid as a retainer but it would "recognise them as a vital part of the organisation".
He said their role would be to bring issues relevant to the grain industry to the GGA board's attention and provide information to growers on new services provided by the company and its subsidiaries.
Mr Mooney said making advisory group members paid staff would compromise their independence.
"If they were supposed to be giving independent advice but were getting paid, it would be very hard to reject the boss's view.
"Besides, the GGA board refuses to take on any advice brought by the current committee, so what chance is there of taking advice from the new committee?"
