Fast facts - The rest of the Australian story!

The Australian Bureau of Statistics observes that average milk price increased continually between 1994 and 2004 in all Australian state capitals.

Australian deregulation meant that prices dropped in the first 6 months and then started going up again. After deregulation in the Australia – from 1999 to 2004, retail prices increased by $0.35 (26%) in the best case scenario and up to $0.80 more (60%).

Again, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the 2004 price of a 2-litre milk carton in Australia is about $2.69 to $3.15. In Quebec, for example, the price of a 2-litre in 2004 was $2.14 - $2.79 ($0.35 to $0.55 cents LESS) source:Dairy Farmers of Canada

Farmers know what happens when there are a few processors or buyers for their products and they have no power to counter this consolidation. The examples below ARE the reason farmers refuse to give up what control they have left. Time after time, the same old tired, incomplete logic of the economists is trotted out for the Canadian public to swallow. Experience has taught them these truths:

· in the Canadian experience with BSE, farm prices caved while store prices remained the same – and increased after a year (farm prices have yet to reach the level they were before BSE)

· prices for milk in Australia keep going up;

· in the U.K. experience, farm price went down while retail prices went up

· Coffee farmers have seen their price cut in half within a few years as production increased. Because there are only 3 major companies who supply coffee to the world, prices consumers pay for coffee went up. And that increase did not reach the farmers.

The concept of the consumer seeing price decreases is dangled repeatedly before the public as an excuse to lure governments and everyone else in. When it comes to food, however, the real control is usually in the hands of a few large processors or manufacturers and the huge food retailers of this country. In this climate, what happened to Canadian farmers when BSE struck, is exactly what happened in Australia when they de-regulated their dairy industry.

Last year’s study by Professor Daniel Mercier-Gouin on supply management has shown that, over 20 years, it is the 2 countries that have totally “deregulated” their dairy sector – New Zealand and Australia - that consumer prices have increased the most! see http://www.go5quebec.ca/en/documents.php.

The subsidy-based system, like the one advocated by Valentin Petkantchin, only leads to larger farms (45% of Australian farmers expanded after deregulation) and more farmers needed off-farm jobs (27% work off-farm, despite dairying being a 7-days/week job). These statistics are from the MEI paper.

De-regulation would mean an increase in retail price for consumers, subsidies to farmers and force our family farms to get big or get out.