quotas as in milk and poultry

[gaucho]

I have to laugh at this one. First I agree that milk has gotten expensive, one because dairy farmers calculate out their annual cost of production and when they add new bells and whistles like robotic milkers and fancy feeders, it gets tacked on to the COP and to the milk. So in one way it has swung a little to far... that said, I think it is actually great when a farmer makes his cost of production, return on investment and reasonable profit. If you think milk is too much then buy a milk cow and raise it yourself. Food Free day in Canada is Feb 12th... the length of time a Canadian has to work to make enough for feeding himself an entire year, and some of you guys think consumers should be spending less... Give your head a shake. Yes beef are not worth enough to reflect cost at the farm level, but when you sell your calf /yearling you have sold your product and are out of the loop. If you think you aren't getting enough start selling it in the box and move up the chain instead of whining... better yet work together like the dairy and poultry industry does to lobby and get better prices. It pisses me of in this industry the jealousy and animosity that happens when someone gets ahead... from what I have seen those that do that are the ones that spend the most time in the coffee shop and never get off their butts to do something different. Ps I am not a dairy farmer I raise beef

[ALLFARMER]

Buy a milk cow? Never going to happen. At $6.5/4L family's in my opinion are having to consider should we buy milk or not. Milk should not get priced so high its for the well off and should be rationed. Milk should be affordable for even lower income families...its a staple food. Already around here u can buy milk cheaper...whole milk but for us its easier to get it with the rest of our groceries. My point is people are bypassing the milk system in three ways.. just cutting it out or cutting back or buying milk from unregistered small scale farmers. Also milk producers get paid monthly not yearly like beef producers. Cash flo like that makes it much easier to service debt. Anyone here want to argue Beef is more profitable than Dairy? Do you think Beef is going to go to a quota system? Lets just all give our beef producing land over to the rich Dairy farmers. The playing field between Dairy and Beef needs to be leveled. If u still don't figure so cover the weekly milk costs for my family of 9
Thanks

[kato]

Priorities ... priorities, that's the name of the game. I grew up dirt poor. Dad was a truck driver, and there were four of us kids. No matter what happened, there was always milk in the fridge, and we were never told we couldn't have as much as we wanted.

However, the four of us shared one 750 ml bottle of Coke, once a week, on Saturday night. (aka Hockey Night in Canada LOL) We ate in restaurants only on very special occasions, and instant anything just didn't happen in our kitchen, unless you count Kraft Dinner. ;-)

Nowadays budgets include a lot of things that are considered necessities that we always considered to be luxuries. Milk is one thing that belongs in the necessity column, IMHO.

[gaucho]

Its about priorities Allfarmer and as you put it easier to buy... so convenience. People somehow have money to buy water with sugar and color and pay $2.50 / bottle for coke so I don't see the problem... You obviously did not pay attention to what I said about food free day.... 2nd how much milk do you need in a day... no one needs to down a 1 liter per day... that said my kids go through piles of it to but then whats more important the food in your mouth or what you drive?... We all have choices just like how big our families get and so if you think milk is too expensive and your family is going through to much then you should have watched what you were doing at night, wean them of the white stuff or buy Daisy.... I did the math my family Buys $3500 / year worth of milk.... for that I can justify a cow and in fact will have one that calves at the end of March and then dry her of In December... Pretty sad when farmers are as dependent upon the grocery store as their cousins in the cities

[gaucho]

One last thing.... have you bought beef at a store lately.... You think you are not making enough with beef... think about how little your cattle would be worth if the consumer thought beef should be priced so that they could enjoy a tenderloin every day....

[15444]

The next generation of consumers 18-30 year olds, buy very little milk. Largely based on price. I don't know how many times people have told me they compared a 12 pack of Coke to a gallon of milk and sided with the Coke.

I am one of the extremes. I drink at least a 1/2 gallon of milk every day, so the times when I can milk a cow, it pays out pretty quickly. The last one I had was a 1/4 Holstein, 3/4 Hereford and she gave at least a gallon every day over the course of 4 months. At local milk prices over that time period, that was more than the value of a good beef calf.

[smcgrath76]

I giggled at some of this...
Food is too expensive often comes from
households with $1500 of vehicle
payments in a month, yet complain at
spending $100 a week on food.
I do feel for lower income families that
have to make difficult choices, but I
don't think agricultural families should
have to be among those lower income
families making the choices all of the
time...

[burnt]

For a year or two I milked a cow to supply our household which includes/included 4 milk GUZZLING kids. At over 4 liters a day, there appeared to be a savings in having a "house cow".

Well, she also fed a few calves besides the house needs, but all things considered, (diet-finicky Holstein, be-there-twice-a day-every day, cleaning milk, etc. utensils) it was not cheap milk.

It was mostly a make-work project with benefits. Return to labour was almost nil when the time involved was taken into account.But fresh, whole milk is also unbeatable.

So, I say to anyone who thinks milk is too expensive - go milk your own darn cow! But they just don't get it because they have no idea what is involved. Don't go into it thinking you are gonna save a bunch of money.

[grassfarmer]

Yep, it's all about choices and priorities. Many of the "low income" families are the ones with the big vehicle payments, always in front of you in the queue at the gas station buying smokes and lottery tickets but can't afford milk - give me a break. All the moaning about need for food-banks and poverty in our rural communities is not the reality I see for the most part. Way more problems caused by too much food instead of too little.
Nothing wrong with a "house cow" in my book - we were brought up with them and it taught us how to milk at an early age, gave a daily commitment to tend for an animal and a warm barn chore to do before heading out for the day. That's the kind of one to one animal interaction some of the horse owners indulge $thousands a year for.

[ALLFARMER]

gaucho I would suspect we spend about what you do a year maybe a little less. We maybe once every three weeks by potato chips and it is very rare to have pop in this house like 8x a year maybe. The biggest difference is the sale of booze is banned and bar's are not allowed in this town. How may town in Alberta can say that? If you want a drink bad enought its a one hour drive away. It's is a little thing that makes quite a difference.

[DogPatch]

Price of milk is lower because of US Government subsidies. AND some stores will us milk as a lost leader, and easily make it up on something else.

[burnt]

No kidding, Dogpatch, but it is those artificially low prices that CDN consumers think should be the norm here.

We buy our milk weekly for $3.99/4L at either of two stores in our area that do that same thing.