By Terry Meagher

The Madoc Co-operative Association, consisting of farm supply stores in Madoc, Foxboro and Tweed, has been hit by a double whammy costing $600,000 and has been forced into receivership.

"It’s all over," said President Charles Dornbos, a dairy farmer at Foxboro. Everything is for sale.

On December 23, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice gave the bankruptcy firm of A. Farber & Partners Inc. the authority to take charge of all undertakings, assets and properties of the co-operative.

The co-operative had previously divested its crop input section and has dropped from 30 to 15 employees over the past two years. The three stores are still operating and the hope is they’ll be bought by another company.

The co-op was hit with two legal battles. In one case, an individual argued that he got sick after renovating the outside of his house and accused the co-op, which was operating a sprayer two fields away.

The Ministry of Environment laid charges, which were dismissed. But not before the co-op racked up $300,000 in court costs that the Ontario government refused to pay.

Co-op president Dornbos appealed to Agriculture Minister Leona Dombroski and was told that he couldn’t recoup costs from the MOE because the government won’t cover court costs.

"It was a witch hunt," Dornbos said.

The second whammy hit in January, 2008, when a five-year battle over the failed Co-operatives of Ontario Trusteed Pension Plan, covering 26 agricultural co-operatives, came to an end favouring the pensioners.

The Madoc co-op had to pay $280,000 as its share of the settlement. Altogether Madoc paid out almost $600,000 for the two court cases over a year and one half.

The co-op was overwhelmed. That was too much for a co-operative grossing about $10 million per year, Dornbos said.

What’s more, there was a downturn in the economy in 2009 and its customer base declined. The way of doing business was also changing.

"The bigger guys don’t deal with co-ops anymore," Dornbos said.