It’s a brisk autumn morning about an hour south of Quebec City and the family from Ferme Lehoux Holstein is out in full force to greet a school bus full of journalists.
Despite the fact that media coverage of dairy farmers in Canada ranges on any given day between a mix of simple ignorance to ideological vengeance, family patriarch Germain Lehoux was remarkably unguarded as he addressed his visitors.
“You are the key to explaining to people in the towns and cities what it is that we do,” he said.
His wife, Claire Ouellet, handed out plastic booties and everyone traipsed into the barn to see the cows, which curiously reached out if you weren’t looking to lick cameras and backpacks with their long tongues.
Germain, flanked by his wife, son Pier-Olivier Lehoux, daughter Marie–Eve Lehoux, her husband Dany Cabot, and two of their three grandchildren, put a human face onto a debate that for most of us boils down to whether or not we might save a few cents on a jug of milk.
For this fifth generation family, all of which work on the farm, the supply management debate is about their future.
That’s not to say their farm would disappear if the import protections and controlled pricing were lost. But it would fundamentally change as competition from the U.S. and New Zealand flooded into Canada.
Lehoux Holstein milks 70 cows, which is the average herd size in Canada.
As master breeders of Holstein cows, about one-third of the family income comes from selling replacement cows to other milk producers and other breeders. Their female stock typically sells for between $5,000 and $6,000.
Germain says their customers typically don’t quibble about the price, which is higher than usual for replacement stock.
Their genetic selections are based on the cow’s productivity, but also on whether they have good legs, feet and udders. That increases their longevity in the herd, which reduces replacement costs over time.
Whereas a commercial operation measures productivity through the herd’s average overall production, the Lehoux operation tracks productivity based on each individual cow’s performance.
Using marketing through social media, their heifers are selling across Canada and into the U.S. The show ribbons lining the walls in the dairy barn office also augment their reputation as quality breeders
The Lehoux family has joined with three other breeders to share the cost of acquiring new genetics. Top bred Holstein cows are expensive, upwards of $150,000 to $200,000 each.
“In a group we share the risk; we share the revenue, but we share the expenses also,” he said.
There’s no mistaking the pride in Germain’s voice as he describes the roles of his children in the operation. His son handles the genetic selection and marketing through social media; his daughter does the books. She keeps a tight rein on their spending.
“Everything we do has to be efficient,” he says.
Peeking into their lives, one would be hard-pressed to make the case that this type of operation is in any way inefficient, or that families like this one are living a high life at the expense of milk drinkers.
Sure their business is successful. But they also work hard to make it so.
Germain rankles when asked about the current political climate facing dairy producers in Canada. Two individuals have come to symbolize the challenges they face.
“I hate that Trump, I hate that Bernier,” he says.
The Lehoux family was among a coalition of eastern Canadian dairy farmers who participated in a well-orchestrated social media campaign earlier this year that is credited as costing Maxime Bernier the federal Conservative party leadership race.
However, they can’t do much about Donald Trump, who was successful in getting Canadian dairy policy inserted into the ongoing NAFTA renegotiations.
“People don’t know anything about what we do every day,” he says. Nor do they understand that Canadians pay for their milk once — at the grocery store, whereas in the U.S. and other dairy exporting countries they pay through their taxes too, he said.
Defending supply management has become as much a part of their daily routine as milking cows.
“It has always been a fight to keep it,” he said.
Source: Winnipeg Free Press
