GRAIN growers around the Murraylands could be pushing for legal action against a grain marketer at a public meeting to be held on Thursday.
Karoonda farmer Leighton Huxtable said he was hoping for a big crowd at a meeting at the Tailem Bend Football Club from 4pm, saying some farmers were talking about a lawsuit against grain marketing company Viterra.
A rift developed between grain growers and Viterra over summer, with farmers complaining of inadequate classification processes and long waits at silos.
“There’ll be talk of a class action by growers who think they’ve done a lot of dough,” Mr Huxtable said.
He said growers had been frustrated because they felt Viterra had not made enough use of falling numbers machines to classify grain.
Mr Huxtable said farmers and transport companies had also been forced to wait long periods to offload their grain at Viterra sites, costing them much needed income.
He said growers were expecting Federal and State members Patrick Secker and Adrian Pederick to attend the meeting, while a spokeswoman for Nick Xenophon confirmed a representative for the senator would also be in attendance.
A spokeswoman for Viterra said the company was in discussions with the silo committee about its attendance, and defended the grain classification process.
“Following widespread rain in early December, Viterra revised its classification process to accommodate altered grain quality and the situation where growers had a much tighter time frame to harvest and deliver grain,” she said.
“Viterra’s visual classification backed up by a falling number test on a running sample was the best solution to receive the state’s grain into the system accurately and quickly.”
