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.

[cowman]

The basic concept of supply management was supplying enough product to fill the domestic demand? Was that a bad thing?
Of course you can't export...you give up that right to be assured you get paid a profit. What is the sense of exporting a product at a loss? The CWB is not supply management...not at all...it is an export agency!
Where is it written in stone that supply management meant quota was for sale? That is the way it evolved but the intention was never for it to be a cash cow. How about the concept that when you quit your quota goes back to the agency to be reassigned?
Actually our dairy and chicken farmers are very inovative...among the most advanced in the world? You must remember that their "guaranteed price" is nothing compared to the subsidies most countries pass out, including the USA!
What is the sense of being able to export to the US/Japan when we turn around and let in Aussie and soon massive amounts of South American meat?
Does anyone really believe the Canadian consumer is worse off because they can't drink imported milk or eat imported chickens? I believe the Canadian consumer is quite content knowing they are getting a safe home raised product at a reasonable price?
What in the end was the real evil of supply management...I would suggest the buying and selling of quota? Take that part out and it allows the small family farm to exist! And isn't that what we all basically want? To see our countryside and rural communities to continue and to prosper? You can have the multinational corporate outlook with a total **** of the land and people or you can have policies for the people and the health of the land.
Canada was supposed to be the land of opportunity for the European settlers...not something for the pirates and thieves to rob and **** at will?

[cakadu]

The original intention was for quota to be just that - it has evolved into the biggest cash cow (pardon the pun) that there is. If the sons and daughters of the original quota owners had to buy it at fair market value when taking over the farm, they wouldn't be able to afford it. Many inherit the quota and thus inherit the cash at the end of the day.

There are dairies etc. that do not operate at a profit, but neither are they as hard hit for being poor managers either because the costs of production are covered - theoretically. Those cost of production formulas are the most zealously guarded pieces of information out there. Just try to find one.

Don't kid yourself cowman about the amount of money that is "subsidized" to the supply managed industries. It is in the several billion dollar range, so we are not far off of the money that is being spent in other countries. In other countries it is spread around a little more than it is here. There are figures out there that if the supply management system in dairy were dropped today, the income of dairy farms would drop by 60% tomorrow - literally.

From a consumer perspective we are paying far more than we should for milk - if we were going on the world price. We also pay far more for the products derived from milk i.e. cheese etc.

As for the innovation - yes the equipment is innovative, but just try and set up your own cheese shop or sell milk on your own. That is the innovation I am talking about. The rest of the agriculture industry is fairly innovative too and it allows for new entrants, new products and thinking outside of the box. These are conspicuously absent in the supply management system.

There are pros and cons to every system and if you want to be rigidly controlled in order to be assured a fair return for your product, then I guess that is the way to go. Me, I want to be free to provide goods that the consumer is willing to pay for.

Make no mistake about it, if they can find some substitute for milk that has the same health benefits, or a company like Nestle for example can find a way to use something other than milk in it's chocolate - which by the way is becoming more and more of a reality - they will do it because they will be able to get it for a far cheaper price than what they have to pay for milk.

One of the reasons that Canada is not a big player in value-added meals and such is because our inputs, namely the milk, eggs and chicken we would use as ingredients, cost us far more than they do in other countries, which puts us at an economic disadvantage when trying to get into that marketplace. Next time you're at the grocery store, go and have a look at some of those types of items and see where they are produced. Not in Canada you say?

[cswilson]

I have inlaws in the broiler business so I get their view of supply management-it sucks. The cost of production formula doesn't respond as fast as your costs do for one thing. I'll tell you how much they dislike it after 30 years of feathers they leased their quota out and expanded their FREE ENTERPRISE cowherd. I can't understand all this badmouthing of our marketing and production system-it isn't perfect but it's better than any others out there.Of course you realize with supply management you are obligated to not underproduce either-fun city in a drought. It's like our coffee shop-old guys in there crying in their Java about how awful Canada is-when they are retired and cashing a cheque every month. We still live in the land of opportunity if you aren't afraid to look for it.

[PureCountry]

Very well said cakadu and cswilson, VERY well said. Our current system in this country is not perfect, but if you're looking for a perfect one, live in a fairy tale at Disneyland. Because our markets are unpredictable, volatile, and monopolized, we have become innovative, and must continue to do so if we are to survive. We cut our costs, or we look for markets that pay more, or we give the customer what they want and charge a premium. For some that means a DIFFERENT standard of living - not necessarily lower - or just thinking outside the box and making a few small changes. Hell our ancestors have adapted to overcome great adversity, and if we choose to follow in their footsteps as agricultural producers, we must do the same.

We do these things to make a living doing what we love, or else we get out and SHUT UP WITH ALL THE BITCHING AND WHINING!! If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

[cowman]

The fact is supply management will never happen in beef. Not with the way "globalization" is happening. In fact in the end I believe the poultry and dairy industry will be sacrificed?
All I was asking is whether the whole concept of supplying the domestic market and keeping out imports might have been a lot better for the rural people?
What happens when we get full "globalization"? How do we compete when we live in the bloody Artic? Well a simple answer...we don't!
Just look at where just about everything you buy comes from? China, India, Thailand. What happened to all the goods that were once made here? Well they are no longer in business because they couldn't compete with 50 cents an hour workers and absolutely no safety or environmental standards. Now do you think that is a good thing? What it amounts to is slavery? I would suggest that is where we are headed in agriculture?
I don't think subsidies to supply management amounts to billions...I mean the feds simply don't have billions? However if you consider it a subsidy to have to pay a fair return to the farmer, then I guess it might be a large amount. After all we could probably buy milk from some South American country for less? But really do you begrudge having to pay a couple of bucks for a liter of milk? Would you be happier if you could get it for $1.50? Of course the family dairy down the road would have to go but hey, we'd save that 50 cents right?
But Canadians are innovative right? We'll dazzle the world by our little innovations in agriculture? Not going to happen. We'll "innovate" ourselves right into the poor house! And then we'll be eating Brazilian beef and drinking milk from Chile, while we go to work for 50 cents an hour?