In the past couple of months, get two dairy farmers together and one or the other always asks, “What are you going to do when they kill Supply Management?”.
Surprisingly, both will already have their course of action planned out. The only two options are either he’s getting out or will double the herd.
The former leads to the next question of “How will you make a living?”, the second option has the question, “How will you be able to afford doubled feed and costs?”.
Farmers up and down the concessions watched as the present government told them it supports supply management in dairy, eggs and poultry and then sold out the dairy industry to the European Union by granting a big increase in the quantity of allowable cheese imports.
At the time, the Conservatives assured farmers it was done to allow beef and pork producers access to the European market. The theory obviously was to make the dairy farmers feel that they were giving up something so other farmers would benefit. Trouble is, they forgot to explain how our beef and pork exports would get around the health, housing and handling requirements demanded and enforced by the European countries.
They can’t, so the door is still closed to our products. Since then farmers have been planning, waiting for the axe to drop.
Now there is the Trans Pacific Pact negotiations and the rhetoric from Ottawa supporting our industries is not so strong this time. Plus one of the major players is the U.S.A who would love nothing better than to have their farmers feed Canadians.
In Ontario, in a usual year since the implementation of the Canadian Quality Milk (CQM) program, which demands more and more paper work and recordkeeping by farmers who are already overrun by red tape and short on time, we saw about 10 dairymen sell out their quota each month for a total of about 100 per year.
The number one reason always given was having to deal with the CQM – the industry shooting itself in the foot! Even when farm kids chose not to take on the business, the CQM demands were top of the list over the usual not wanting to be tied down to the farm and the massive debts.
This summer it seems the TPP took the place of CQM as the major concern. The pre-election campaigning started far earlier and nothing has been said about supply management from Harper, Mulcair or Trudeau.
Are they all planning on selling out the system to sign the TPP? Farmers have been acting as if they believe this.
In August, 22 Ontario dairy farmers sold out all their quota, more than double the usual number. In September, 21 called it quits. Who knows what October will bring. So far this year, 116 Ontario dairies have closed up shop and there are still three months to go.
One assumes the other provinces are the same. Many feel in 2016 Ottawa will announce the closure of supply management. What is happening now is called getting your money out while you can and paying off your massive debts.
Northern New York dairy farmers, many of them ex-Canadian dairymen who sold out their farms and quota and ran to the U.S. with the resulting millions and their cattle, happily ship milk into Canada through the numerous loopholes in our import rules and regulations.
And those holes are getting bigger every year as the totals steadily increase and more ways around restrictions are found. Companies here using milk, milk products and by-products readily accept this milk as their concern is nothing more than making a few more dollars for their shareholders. They don’t care where it comes from, what it does or doesn’t contain or how it was produced. Profits come first.
Our politicians know the average Canadian voters don’t care where their milk, or for that matter, any of their food comes from as long as the shelves are full and it is cheap. No one except farmers will withhold votes and there are fewer and fewer of them every day … so keep the majority happy.
Meanwhile, those against supply management pretend it is government subsidized and that it makes food prices high. Gullible consumers follow right along behind them, but when the system is dissolved and farmers no longer receive enough money for their products to pay the bills, it is the consumers’ tax dollars which are used as farm aid.
That is how it works in the U.S.A., where the recently approved Farm Bill subsidizes farmers to produce food. In countries such as France, farmers are picketing, demanding government aid as, with supply management gone, prices have dropped to the point where they can no longer afford to produce.
Higher government spending equals higher taxes. Somehow the anti-supply management groups neatly forget that. And our leaders hope you will, too. The question now is how low will Canadian dairy farm numbers fall and will ‘Product of Canada” become as scarce as hens’ teeth?
Source: Standard Freeholder
