Manitoba Grain Growers' Association

The Manitoba Grain Growers' Association (MGGA) was a farmer's association that was active in Manitoba, Canada in the first two decades of the 20th century. It provided a voice for farmers in their struggle with grain dealers and the railways, and was influential in obtaining favorable legislation. The MGGA supported the Grain Growers' Grain Company, a cooperative of prairie farmers, and its organ the Grain Growers' Guide. At first it remained neutral politically, but in 1920 it restructured as the United Farmers of Manitoba in preparation for becoming a political party.

At the start of the 20th century the North-West Elevator Association, closely associated with the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, controlled over two thirds of the grain elevators on the prairies. The elevator companies, working together, could force the farmers to accept low prices for their grain. When there were shortages of rail cars the railways gave preferential treatment to the companies over the farmers. The 1908 "Partridge Plan" of the Manitoba Grain Growers listed other "ill practices" that included "the taking of heavy dockage, the giving of light weight, misgrading the farmers' grain sold on the street or graded into store, failure to provide cleaning apparatus, changing the identity of the farmers' special binned grain, declining to allot space for special binning and refusing to ship grain to owner's order, even when storage charges are tended.

The Manitoba Grain Act was passed in 1901, designed to prevent these abuses and ensure fair practices and prices in the booming grain trade in the prairie provinces of Canada. There was a bumper crop that year, and farmers found they could not get their produce to market because the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) and the grain companies were still failing to conform to the act. In 1901 the Territorial Grain Growers' Association (TGGA) was founded in Indian Head, in what is now Saskatchewan, in a meeting of farmers organized to address the issue.William Richard Motherwell was the driving force behind the TGGA. In 1902 the TGGA won a case against the CPR that forced it to comply with the Manitoba Grain Act. Farmers became increasingly interested in the TGGA, and the Manitoba Grain Growers Association was formed as a TGGA branch.