One thing has never made sense to me, and that is how we seem so interested in tossing aside the supply-managed sectors of farming.
In the past we have heard groups such as APAS (Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan ) talk about what grain farmers really need is a pricing system reflective of the cost of production.
At their core, that is one of the foundations of supply-management systems. Dairy and poultry producers receive a price that reflects at least a portion of the industry's general costs associated with producing a gallon of milk, a dozen eggs, or a pound of turkey.
The idea of producers recouping their costs should be central to any farm program - from a coffee producer in Â鶹´«Ã½AV America benefiting from fair trade sales - to a dairy producer in Ontario, or a grain grower on the Canadian Prairies.
Interestingly consumers are only impacted marginally by having farmers recover their costs. A nickel on every loaf of bread would go a long way to helping farmers manage a consistent profit when you place that nickel on every loaf a bushel of wheat produces.
However there is a feeling out there that we would be better off dismantling supply management in an effort to secure market access for other farm commodities.
Now if we take a moment to consider how well the world marketplace does for farmers, we come to realize that as many years as they pay prices generating profits for farmers, they have a seemingly equal number of years where farmers need government support programs to keep them viable.
That's the other side of supply management. There is an element to control production levels to basically match domestic consumption.
Markets usually rise and fall based on supply and demand. High prices send farmers into a lemming-like rush to boost production in order to grab the high prices. As a result, supply soon exceeds demand and like those same lemmings, prices crash off the cliff.
Sheldon Wilcox, manager of DLMS Alberta, a speaker at this year's Grain Millers Harvest Showdown, summed it up rather well.
Wilcox said he sees "two, three, maybe four years," of good prices ahead in the cattle sector, adding "if I had to guess, I'd say four."
In fact Wilcox said strong prices will stay until the industry "screws up and overproduces.
"And we will," he said.
Supply management helps eliminate the ebb and flow of returns.
But apparently that's a bad thing. Many seem to want to toss the dairy and poultry sectors into the same market uncertainty as wheat and cattle.
You would think we'd be better off trying to get other farm commodities to the same place as dairy and poultry, that being one where returns at least have some correlation to costs, and consumers pay a price in the store that also has greater connection to farm costs.
Some argue supply management makes food costs higher than they should be. Perhaps higher than they could be, because dismantling the system will lead to lower farmer returns, but they are not higher than they should be because they reflect some real farm production costs.
Canada's effort to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership seems to be fuelling the current debate, since supply-management appears a chip Canada would put in the table to get a deal.
The supply management chip may get us into a new trade deal, but the dairy and poultry sectors will be dragged down into the same pit where returns often fail to meet costs, and somehow that is hard to justify as progress.
