The need for a Turf Industry lobby – Jerry Rousseau

Lawi S. Njeremani

This is the full interview with the Executive Director of the Western Canada Turfgrass Association (WCTA) from the article Time for a Lobby Group for the Turf Industry in Canada?

Background to the interview

The most visible stakeholders in the Turf industry can be quickly identified as golf courses, golf course Superintendents, Sod producers, Municipal and Professional Sports fields, Consulting & Research institutes, synthetic turf manufacturers, Municipal Parks & Recreation facilities, Landscaping and/or professional lawn care, Sales suppliers and dealers

Unfortunately, these stakeholders are fragmented along lines of specialization and their respective end products. Even where the stakeholders recognize by mutual consensus that their activities have direct dependence, inter-relation and co-relation this is not reflected at the most crucial level—Policy making.

The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) for example does focus on agriculture, food and rural affairs in its policy structures and strictures. A surface observation disqualifies golf courses in urban areas from the assurance of the Ministry’s services especially when they fall in undefined bounds—which occurs more often as the Turf industry keeps expanding in technology, specialization as well as consumer and stakeholder tastes.

Moving on, I will start by quoting something we’ve been saying for years, “We can serve the common issues amongst our members while celebrating the differences”, but completely agree with the assertion that stakeholders are fragmented.  I see this every day and would go even further by saying there are stakeholders who don’t even realize they are stakeholders, for example, golfers, field sport users and homeowners.

From my experience, the biggest contributor to industry fragmentation is the strong instinct in forming fraternities amongst specializations.  Humans generally need to feel like being part of a group and sometimes those within the group can feel that outsiders don’t understand their concerns and/or issues. 

To some degree, I’ve even seen a tendency toward self-pity that ends up helping justify exclusivity versus inclusivity, ie. no one else understands my problems leading to an ‘us and them’ mentality.  This can be exacerbated when highly specialized people, who often tend to only be interested in their own specialty, completely recuse themselves from the benefits of being exposed to outside issues and perspectives. 

To elaborate, I once had a prominent member say that when they paved their club’s parking lot, they did not join the Paver’s association.  While joining an unrelated association may not make sense or be warranted, this attitude completely overlooks the purpose and potential of an industry organization, ie. creating best management practices to ensure members are held to high standards that would at the end of the day, help ensure this member’s parking lot was paved correctly.

In addition, there are those who simply want to be part of an exclusive group and wish to have control over their domain without outside distraction.  No matter the cause of fragmentation, those who have isolated themselves often don’t realize something is important until it’s too late.  I’ve found this especially true when advocating regulatory matters.

Interrogating the role of government policy

L. S. Njeremani: From your organizational experience, does OMAFRA serve the growing needs of the Turf industry comprehensively or are there gaps of unmet needs?

Jerry Rousseau: Since OMAFRA is an Ontario provincial ministry, I’m unable to comment except I do notice some irony here, that is, an interview about Turf Industry fragmentation that doesn’t appear to recognize there is a Turf Industry outside of Ontario.

L. S. Njeremani: As an Industry stakeholder, do you feel there is a need for a Lobby body that brings together all Turf Industry stakeholders and to become the focal point of negotiation and advocacy at Policy making level?

Jerry Rousseau:

Yes and no. 

Yes because ideally it would be the best approach in many ways, ie. government would rather speak to one representative and when lobbying, it’s better to have everyone ‘singing from the same song page’.

No because from my experience, the turf industry is far too diverse, our nation far too large and the issues/priorities far too variable to ever be completely effective.  Creating an overarching lobby body doesn’t fundamentally address the fragmentation problem and can even make it worse, ie. one perspective takes lead and dominates while others do not always agree or feel disproportionally represented.  In addition, the larger the group, the more ‘watered down’ and generic these policies become. 

Finally, needs of the end users must not be under-valued or under-estimated in any conversation about turf industry advocacy. For example, growing the game of golf is and should remain a driver for the turf industry as should growing participation within various field sports.  This should be obvious to anyone earning a living from the turf management industry but typically it’s not on the radar of turf managers or their associations.

L. S. Njeremani: Do you think there is another organization better suited to conduct the lobbying and advocacy? Do they need to update their organizational objectives to include “lobbying and advocacy on behalf of Turf Industry stakeholders” –including but not limited to those listed in the introduction.

Jerry Rousseau:

The short answer is no, there is no current organization suited to lobby on behalf of the entire turf management profession and I do not believe it’s a likely possibility.

A stakeholder audit would help understand this by illustrating the many players involved with their long history of complicated partnerships, inter-connections, overlap and levels of knowledge on any given issue. 

For example, the golf industry has the National Allied Golf Association and their respective provincial counter-parts, ie. AGA-BC, that include representation from golf superintendents however the provincial groups have never really interacted with the national group.

L. S. Njeremani: What would be the obstacles to be surmounted in case there is need for a new Lobby Group?

Jerry Rousseau:

• Centralization tends to follow population demographics, that is, larger groups will hold more weight than smaller groups, those further from the center will receive less attention to their needs than those nearer
• Political will or lack thereof, that is, some organizations want to ‘be the boss’ while others are happy to follow along, which is neither healthy or balanced and can never properly serve the broader whole
• Difficult to agree on any path forward, differences amongst stakeholders in levels of knowledge on any given issue creates difference in setting priorities and sense of urgency
• Being reactive versus proactive is a hard sell, ie. resources seem to be more readily available in dire situations.
• Frequent changes of government combined with various levels of government involved, that is, municipal, provincial, national, make it extremely difficult to stay on top of all the issues and perhaps more importantly, forge relationships with politicians
• Expensive, lack of funds/resources
• Already too many associations
• Lack of trust between organizations
• Lose the ability for individuals to contribute
• Unintended consequences of lobby efforts, ie. losing funding, higher levels of compliance scrutiny
• Logistically unlikely to unify all turf industry sectors and their various components

L. S. Njeremani: What should the Lobby Group list as its 5 key objectives?

Jerry Rousseau:

The mandate of any lobby group should be industry support and betterment. Objectives to reach that goal could include:

• Support and growth of the industry and its members

• Research and information translation/transfer

• Best management practices

• Ensure industry perspectives are heard and understood by political decision makers

• Public awareness

Extended Interview with Jerry Rosseau

L. S. Njeremani: I wish to pick your brains very briefly on three aspects:

One– Can the Turf Industry lobby group adopt (though not directly) the service formation of a typical Military set up, where the Army, Air force, Navy and other specialized units go to battle for the same cause but with varying specialization. Each is deployed strategically based on the battle objective

Jerry Rousseau: Yes, and that’s already being done somewhat in the golf industry with national and provincial Allied Golf Association (AGA) groups however I’m not sure it could be directly compared with military branches but there are similarities.  In British Columbia, we used this approach about a decade ago whereby the NGCOA took lead on lobbying the provincial government to remove license plate requirements for golf carts.  The other allied groups were interested in this matter but the NGCOA was the most interested and had the budget to hire a lobby company so by default, they became the driver.  The result was positive and license plates are no longer required in BC (British Columbia), saving the industry hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. 

L. S. Njeremani: Two– I had the opportunity to listen to a Professor of Psychiatry pose the question: If there are two groups in a jungle and one had a leader and the other was led by everyone, and a pride of Lions (man-eaters) was introduced to the ecosystem, and a researcher came by after a determinate period, which of the two groups would have higher chances of survival?

Jerry Rousseau: History would side with the first method, as do I.  While leadership may look different these days and the current social construct requires group approval or ‘likes’, fact is decisions need to be made quickly at times, especially in matters of life and death, so consulting with the group would not be efficient.  Democratic process should still prevail however, ie. the leader is chosen by members of the group and is accountable to that group.  This comes back to difference in knowledge levels and priorities, which would be exacerbated in the ‘no leader’ group. I live in a small town and if you’ve ever been to a town hall meeting, you would immediately understand the problem!

L. S. Njeremani: Three– Following up on the subject of fragmentation. Could the inherent need for dominance by “larger” Stakeholders in the “Turf Industry” be countered by the analogy of spokes on a bicycle wheel– you never know which spoke is important until the bike hits a rock?

Jerry Rousseau: If everyone adopted that philosophy, absolutely yes, however my experience proves otherwise. A good example is turf research – almost everyone in turf management understands its importance and we see first-hand proof how innovation, research, knowledge translation/transfer and execution has led to amazing advances in turf quality and sustainability, even in the last few years. In fact, golf could be the spokesgroup for these achievements yet most of the non-superintendent golf associations, that is, NGCOA (National Golf Course Owners Association), PGA of Canada, Club Managers have no idea how reliant their business is on turf research and do not put money– a dime, toward its advancement. I guess what I’m trying to say is you need to know you might hit a rock to appreciate the need for spokes!

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