A Defence of Supply Management (via CKCU)

Listen to this podcast with Prof. Bruce Muirhead of the University of Waterloo and Prof. Hugh Campbell of the University of Otago (NZ) discuss the merits of Supply Management. If the mainstream print and television media really wanted a balanced story they could search out this stuff just like I did. Since they have not it begs the question "why not?"

On the plus side radio in Ottawa DID initiate this discussion. On the minus side the announcer did not buy it. (While I remain dubious as to the merits of supply management as a public policy tool!!!!)

What is it with these guys? follow the link below to hear the entire podcast.

Defence of Supply Management (via CKCU)

The Canadian Media strikes again

More articles are hitting the mainstream about supply management again. One in the Globe and Mail goes from the undemocratic treatment of the Wheat Board, to the Governments’ policies on these two systems and the unbalanced treatment they receive to “Supply Management is a rip off for consumers”…etc., etc.

Recently foodie articles are showing up ( In search of higher fat butter) with plenty of zingers in them to try to nail that coffin shut. Phrases like:

"Canada is a butter backwater, with less variety and quality and far higher prices than nearly any other food-loving nation."

"it’s a monopoly-produced dairy commodity"

"a government-mandated 80-per-cent fat content"

"What’s worse, Canada’s government levies a 289.5-per-cent tariff on all but a tiny quantity of foreign butter."

"The Dairy Commission doesn't bother itself making the price of butter competitive for everyday consumers,"

Instead of using the article to help make consumers more informed about the issues behind the rules, there is one negative term after another.

The lack of logic and real information in these articles is one thing. The force behind them all is quite another. In the middle is the Consumer and the farmers that serve them wondering just who and what is going on.

An old but still true adage is ‘follow the money’. Someone is spending a great deal of time (and likely money) drawing in the right wing media and fueling this whole thing. That’s actually pretty easy to do because our media seems to want to ignore what farmers themselves and their defenders are trying to say.

If a sampling of comments on this same article is anything to go by, consumers are being affected by this negative press.

Since no one can get any print or air time of consequence, other tactics are required.

I don’t believe the industry has put enough money behind this issue yet.

The Canadian Press ... nasty stuff

If you google "supply management" today, hundreds of article pop up.

Most of them would be grounds for legal action if supply management was a company.

As the media continues its relentless onslaught against the system of supply management, one has to wonder exactly who they are satisfying and why.

I thought I lived in a democracy with a free press. They are free all right, free to embellish, lie and ignore.

Why is it that not one reporter has sought to find out what the system really means to farmers? No one even seems prepared to tell their side of the story in spite of mountains of comments full of information that should make people pause.

The issues about the safety and security of our food supply (remember the China syndrome?) and the need for safe secure local food supply seem to have gone missing too.

If we cannot depend on our press and media to give us some reality and truth where can we find it? - cg

Chocolate BEVERAGE?? EH!?

The issue of Canadian Dairy processing companies replacing (quietly) 1 % chocolate milk with chocolate beverage has been driving me slightly batty. In the usual fashion of the industry the farmers have been discussing this new wrinkle with the processors trying to get them to pay attention. Meanwhile, the consumer who has been buying this product with confidence has been cruelly tricked!!

I was roaming the web to see what I could see and came across this really good article from another website (Another Talking Head) " Chocolate Milk Beverage", WTF? This cheeky slightly irreverent title is the opener for a well done blog posting about this issue. Even better, this is another consumer who is not happy and wants answers. Even better than that, there are lots of comments posted about this messy business.

I was intrigued to see the Sealest/Parmalat response that claims the formulation change is a result of a federal regulation change. What hogwash!! They are saving mega dollars and can still discount this stuff in the stores. They don't have to use as much milk from Canadian Dairy farmers. Many consumers do not realise what the differences are. The packaging they are using is a blatant abuse. Shame on you Parmalat!

The author is quite right when he discusses the length of the listed ingredients fotr the 'beverage' versus milk. The company can source its Modified milk ingredients from the cheapest available product. It does not have to be Canadian product at all.

There is more...... Chocolate Dairy Beverage, Where’s The Follow-up (WTF)?? is the next round. More good fodder here, too!!! Better watch out Parmalat.

I have gone searching to find 'other' companies that DO provide us with the real thing. In particular I was looking for 4 litre bags of the good stuff.

I found 4 litre bottles of 1% Chocolate milk from Macs Milk and I found 1, 2 and 4 litres of the good stuff from Dairy Oh! a Neilsons Brand.

Macs Milk provides the 4 litre and 1 litre plastic bottles of the good stuff.

Someone needs to take the time to educate the public about what the differences are. Trying to fob off the changes as necessary to meet regulations is horse manure. The regulations state what can be called milk so if a processor wants to goof around with any milk or cream product they can not call it milk any more. This is the reason for the change. The regulation was intended to protect the public and standardize our products.

And apparently we need regulations more than ever........ look what they are trying to do with our chocolate milk.-CG

Feb 12th is Food Freedom Day!

The article below is reprinted from Dairy Farmers of Canada's Feb Action FAX.

On February 12, 2010, the average Canadian will have earned enough income to pay his or her individual grocery bill for the entire year, making it Food Freedom Day!

Food Freedom Day occurs on the same day it did last year, due largely in part to the fact that Canada’s food costs have risen by less than 1% over the past year. This is very low, especially when compared to the United States and the European Union where food prices have gone up by 4% and in some cases over 5%.

Despite the low rise in food prices for Canadian consumers, the Farmers' Share, a recent study commissioned by prairie members of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA), showed that, on average, only 27 per cent of the cost of an entire week's worth of groceries for a family of four goes back to the farms where the food is produced.

To ensure that consumers are able to identify Canadian food products and support our agriculture sector, DFC supports the position of the CFA that they will continue to advocate for effective ingredient-based 'Product of Canada' guidelines that are both informative to the consumer and practical to the agri-food sector. Additionally, consumers know they can continue to support Canadian dairy farmers by looking for the 100% Canadian Milk logo on dairy products.

Products with this logo ensure that consumers are buying highquality, safe and delicious products made with Canadian milk ingredients. “Farmers are very proud of their role in providing high quality food produced at the highest food safety and environmental standards," - Laurent Pellerin, CFA President

This article is courtesy of information from the Candian Federation of Agriculture. For more information please visit cfa-fca.ca

Remebrance Day 2009

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

Anti Farmer Articles Again

The issues surrounding the mis-handling of Canada's Wheat Board were passed around again on various mail lists. The powder that touched it all off came from the National Post. No surpise there, either!

Lorne Gunter, National Post Published: Friday, August 14, 2009

What the Canadian Wheat Board calls "single-desk marketing" is, technically, a "monopsony" -- many sellers, but only one buyer; in this case the federal government. Prairie farmers are forbidden, by law, from selling their wheat or barley to anyone but the CWB, unless their grain is destined to be fed to animals. They face jail time if they defy the board.

In turn, the board claims it can take this huge inventory of grain and sell it internationally for much higher prices than individual farmers could on their own. It then promises to spread these gains around to all wheat and barley growers.

Never mind that there is no evidence this works. Indeed, a major study last year showed that even though the board is one of the largest grain sellers in the world, it still controls too little of the globe's total grain trade to have any impact on the final price.

The price the board receives is as much dependent on swings in world commodity markets as the price lone farmers could earn trading on their own. The trick to getting the highest price is the timing of the sale, not the volume being sold. The board's claim that by gathering together all prairie grain and selling it in bulk it will achieve a higher price is a myth, because even though it controls the output of around 60,000 farmers, it nonetheless still controls too little grain to push the price up by withholding wheat and barley from the market, then rushing it to the selling floor.

Occasionally (like last year), the board gets lucky. Once in a while, its slow, plodding, hulking sales machinery gets grain to market at just the right time and the price gets caught in an updraft. But more often than not, individual farmers could make as much or more by watching commodity trading carefully and pouncing faster than the board could on upward price spikes.

Unless the board's traders are better than private traders or individual farmers at predicting the best time to sell all the grain they have in inventory, it is impossible that theboard can produce greater returns simply by flexing its monopsony.

When Ralph Goodale, one of the smarter Liberals in the House of Commons, was the wheat board minister, I asked him why, if single-desk marketing was such a good practice, his government did not employ it for other industries -- auto parts, for instance. Why not make Magna and Ontario's other parts suppliers sell all their production to the feds, who in turn would then assure them all higher returns by selling their parts in bulk to the automakers?

After coughing and stammering for a minute, Mr. Goodale replied that historical differences in the two industries made them different.But history has no more influence over grain sales than it does over auto parts. Whether or not a trade makes economic sense is no more influenced by history than it is by Friday's CFL scores.

The myth, though, that grain is somehow different from other commodities -- peddled by Mr. Goodale and ministers before him and since -- is what sustains the board, so much so that when the current government has attempted to dismantle the board, the myth-swallowers who run it have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on publicity campaigns and legal challenges to stop the Tories.In 2006, the Tories ordered the board to stop wasting farmers' money on vain attempts to preserve its monopsony. The board balked and went to court to overturn the ban. It won in lower court, where a judge ruled the Tories' gag order amounted to an unconstitutional infringement on farmers' freedom of expression.This produced much clucking and glee among the board's supporters. Many columnists and letter writers across the Prairies crowed "what other laws have the Tories broken" and "Harper's undemocratic ways have finally caught up with him."

But in late-June, a three-judge panel of the Federal Court of Appeal unanimously reversed that decision. It said that the board is entirely the creature of the federal government and as such can be ordered to do by Ottawa whatever Ottawa pleases.

That's the way the Liberals set up the board when they restructured it in the 1990s. They gave it a facade of farmer-control, but retained real decision-making authority at Cabinet.

When the Liberals used this chimera to protect the board's dominance over prairie grain, its backers rejoiced. But now that this loophole is being used by the Tories to introduce real choice for grain farmers, the board's political supporters are aghast.

lgunter@shaw.ca

************************************
To: National Media
From: Joe Hueglin
Subject: Latest assault on Canadian Wheat Board an abject failure.

No change came about in the election of one-third of the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB), directors reported December 8th. Four of five Districts continue to be represented by directors supporting the CWB's single desk system.

Despite altering regulations to permit unlimited advertising by third parties such as the grain companies, disenfranchising thousands who were with a propensity to support the CWB and, as well, Conservative Members of Parliament not registering as third parties when sending out letters in support of candidates favouring their policy of dismantling the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) - all in order to capture enough directorships to be able to control the Board.

‘‘This is a huge victory for farmers. Farmers have stood up to (Prime Minister Stephen) Harper’s vow to ‘walk over’ any opposition to his plan to demolish the CWB,’’ said Stewart Wells, National Farmers Union president. ‘‘With 80 per cent of the farmer-elected Board members supporting the single-desk marketing advantages and a strong role for the CWB, it is time for the Conservative Party to back away from its attacks on the CWB.’’

Back away? Wishful thinking when neo-conservative principles are at issue. Agricultural Minister Gerry Ritz says the neo-conservative Harper Conservatives "remain committed to marketing freedom."

Joe Hueglin

***************************************

Subject: RE: "The Wheat Board's tall tales": Fact or partisan distortion?"

When Ralph Goodale, one of the smarter Liberals in the House of Commons, was the wheat board minister, I asked him why, if single-desk marketing was such a good practice, his government did not employ it for other industries -- auto parts, for instance.

Why not make Magna and Ontario's other parts suppliers sell all their production to the feds, who in turn would then assure them all higher returns by selling their parts in bulk to the automakers?"

I think this was a stupid question - There is a huge difference here between wheat and auto parts: Wheat is a commodity - auto parts are not. Grain of the same variety but from different farmes gets mixed together in a grain elevator - whereas other than nut bolts, auto parts are distint to each maker and specfic model of car.

Secondly, you are dealing with hundres or thousands of farmer producing the same crop - versus a small number of companies that are capable of producing the same autopart - few companies can make hydroformed pickup truck frames.

Individual auto parts makers have more of a one-on-one relationship with the user of their parts - whereas there are many middlemen between farmer and consumer. Next, without the Wheat Board, their role would largely be usurped by some big multinational companies like ADM.

The Wheat Board is Canadian and the farmers can have some influence over it - it is not out there to maximise profits at the expense of farmers. Grain production is also tied to the avaiablility of arable land - it is not a mobile industry - auto prts can be made anywhere on the contient, or around the world -heavy handed intereference could kill the industry here - and the manufacture of parts is often too complex for government to have any real understanding of the processes or way it is managed.

It is a complex issue and maybe the Wheat Board is not perfect, but this was a glib comment about auto parts that seemed to reek of anti-Ontario bias. Why not suggest oil, or lumber - why pick on the auto industry?

bt graff