I sometimes wonder...

[cowman]

What it would have been like if the beef industry had gone for supply management when Whalen offered it back in the seventies?
If we look at the poultry and dairy we see that the farms consolidated and did fairly well? The ones who got out did something else and hey maybe that was a good thing...some dairies were little more than starvation and drudgery?
I suppose we wouldn't have been held hostage by foreign countries because of BSE? I also like the idea of a "built in" profit instead of the roller coaster ride! Your inputs go up...your price goes up.
Cattle people have always prided themseves on being "free marketers" but the fact is this has allowed the parasites to bleed us dry. Maybe we need to realize that the only thing "free" in the cattle business is our labor and equity?

[pandiana]

Exactly so cowman!

[Horse]

Yes I have thought the sae thing a hundred times but I cant decide if we are that stupid or the vast ,majority are that greedy it seems as though a 6 figure salary in the oil patch is the norm and any one managing any department in the gov is worth at least 70 thou I often wonder what it would be like to sit at the table and dcide how to divide up say 5000$ at the end of month and have nothing but living expenses to cover. O well that will be next life I guess but its been a hoot I guess.

[carebear300]

If everybody did everything the smart and right way all the time we would end up like politicians and all of us would starve to death together. A steady income would be quite a change tho. lol

[cowman]

Well Horse, your biggest decision might be whether to buy a new motor home or a jet boat! Somewhere along the line the peasants sort of got lost in the shuffle?
After the First World War prices for farm products skyrocketed. The government brought in the "Parity Act"(I think it was called that) which was basically a way of keeping prices down for farm products. A basic price was set and was supposed to be adjusted to inflation. Well that lasted for about two years until all the soldier boys were home and farming again and then the government scrapped it so prices would drop! I read a thing on this where they said if the "parity Act" had been kept we'd be getting about $17/bu for wheat and $14/lb. for live fat cattle! And I believe when I read that it was the mid eighties!
Look what happened in the second world war? The Canadian government brought in a law where farmers had to sell at a set price. Meanwhile the Americans were getting all the market would bare! Cows were less than half the price in Canada. And to top it off the Canadian government continued to sell wheat to Britain at way below world prices for years after the war was over! Meanwhile urban Canada was growing and prospering at an unheard of rate!
Year after year we have to contend with a government that uses us like a raw product to further the aims of the rest of the country. The only time they might throw us a few crumbs is when they think we might go completely broke. After all you have to keep the cow alive if you intend to squeeze out that last drop of milk!

[kato]

You've got that right.

Imagine, though, if we had supply managment, the field day the lawyers from R-calf would have?

They'd all be driving even fancier Beamers than they drive now.LOL

[GrnAsMoss]

Our cattle industry is based on traditions and is very slow to move in the right direction because of those traditions. No not everyone is guilty obviously. 10 years ago smart
ingenuitive people were trying to sway the industry not to send their fall calves to the auction but to tape them on electonic auctions instead. Forward contracting was a thing only the elite did, now it ensures you profit margins (or losses). With the communication age, surely we should be up to speed enough to group together and create a co-operative with enough voice and power to persuade the government. It's time to look into the dairy industry and see what they did. Maybe a quota system with a guarenteed price for beef.
Eventually the borders will open to our beef.Will we take this time to reflect on what worked in the past and set up organizations to restructure our beef industry? Or will we allow our Eastern based government to have their way with us.

[grassfarmer]

Do I misunderstand supply management or does it not, by defination, imply that if we went down that route we would effectively give up chasing "the global market" and supply only our own beef? In which case R-calf could say what they like about it.
Speaking of R-calf did anyone read the comments they sent to USDA on the possible Border opening? It is available at their website "www.r-calfusa.com" under "comments needed"

[skeeter]

Maybe we need to be careful what we wish for.The supply managed portions of our ag industry export very little or nothing because of trade rules. So if the beef industry exports 60% of its production how many producers do we need? The consumer doesn't want to pay any more for beef so if everybody cuts their herds in half are you suddenly more profitable. There are about 800 dairies left in AB. and at least 10 to 20 thousand beef producers so who gets downsized? Under the great federal dairy quota system Alberta was actually a net importer of milk as Quebec and B.C. had all the quota. 75% of the egg quota is now held by the Hutterian Brethren so that production is held by a few very wealthy folks.Go ahead and try to raise more than 200 chickens or turkeys and watch as the federal quota police descend on your farm, kill the birds and levy a healthy fine or jail time on you. The real money in the quota system is watching that piece of paper jump in value every few years. The only people who can afford quota are immagrants who have sold land for thousands of Canadian dollars per square metere or the men in black. As for single desk selling guys in grain production go broke all the time in fact the most profitable crop year and year out is canola wich isn't marketed under the board. Maybe freedom and choice doesn't matter or maybe we should try to preserve what little we have left.

[cakadu]

Quite correct grassfarmer - you cannot export, or export very little of what you produce. The dairy people just got shot down at the WTO for exporting the over quota here. They took a real beating over it as it cost them hundereds of millions of dollars. The gist of it was that with the supply managed system, by dumping that over supply into the world market they were in effect getting subsidized vis a vis the quota system.

There are currently some 19,000 dairy farmers in Canada. At a meeting I was at about 18 months ago now with the Canadian Dairy Commission they guestimated that in the years to come, only 10% of those would survive, throwing some 17,000 out of business. Given that 49% of the dairy quota is held in Quebec, where do you think the bulk of the displaced are going to come from? It is ironic that they would say this when supply management was intended to preserve the small family farm.

There are other downfalls to supply management, as have been alluded to. By it's very nature, it takes ANY innovation out of the system and heaven forbid you should want to do something that might impinge on the system. The pasture chicken folks are forever under the watchful eye of the chicken supply. They are hard to catch and enforce quota on because they only raise chickens for about 5 months of the year. If they could find a way to shut them down, they would.

Recently I have read articles about how you aren't supposed to buy eggs from those with "backyard" flocks because you don't know how they are processed and you could be getting cracked eggs etc. etc. Now with this bird flu, there could be more of a push to get rid of these flocks.

I would argue you get a much better chicken product and the eggs cannot be beat. As far as the egg shells cracking, it takes a little bit of force to crack the egg from a free range chicken on the side of the pan versus one from the grocery store.

Quota was given away free back in the 60's, I doubt you would get any of it now. Besides, the only ones that could afford to buy beef quota are the bigger players anyway. Sometimes you really do have to be careful what you wish for.