by SUSAN MANN
The United Food and Commercial Workers Union Canada has released a new report with the goal of kick-starting fresh discussion on migrant farm workers’ employment conditions.
But Ken Forth, a farm employer and president of the Foreign Agricultural Resource Management Services, sees the report as another attempt by the union to shut down the Seasonal Agricultural Workers program and paint all farmers as bad bosses. “This is about destroying the program,” says Forth. “They (UFCW Canada) don’t want any of these workers in Canada.”
There are 45,000 migrant farm workers coming to Canada annually, says UFCW’s report, called the Status of Migrant Farm Workers in Canada 2015. UFCW and its Agriculture Workers Alliance released the report Tuesday.
About 20,000 workers annually come to Ontario as part of the Seasonal Agricultural Worker program and 9,000 come as part of the agricultural stream and low-skilled agricultural stream in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program.
This year’s report is a periodic update to reports the union has issued since 2002. The previous report was released in 2010.
Stan Raper, UFCW spokesman and national coordinator for the Alliance, says the 2015 report is being forwarded to all provincial politicians in Canada, federal MPs, the new Liberal Cabinet once it’s appointed and officials in the countries sending workers to Canada.
Raper says hopefully the discussion that ensues from the report’s release is livelier this time and gets more results “than what we’ve had over the last 50 years.”
“I would say that the Seasonal Agricultural Worker program, heading in to its 50th anniversary, has seen very little change” other than a huge increase in the number of migrant farm workers coming to Canada, Raper notes. The program is “designed by the employers, for the employers. There’s nothing in this about workers and giving them an ability to deal with the system.”
The report contains 19 recommendations, including that farm workers be given transferable work permits “so that they’re not tied to one employer if they have an abusive employer or there are problems with that specific employer,” Raper says. Currently, workers can only be transferred with the permission of their employer but the union recommends ditching that requirement.
Some of UFCW’s other recommendations include:
- Install an impartial appeal process for workers who are arbitrarily sent home before their work term is due to be completed.
- Enable workers to have access to some form of sponsorship so they can become citizens of Canada.
- Have national standards to monitor and discipline offshore recruiters.
- Have mandatory dormitory health and safety inspections.
- Revise discriminatory legislation where it exists in Canada to give agricultural workers the same rights as other workers to join a union and bargain collectively.
In Ontario, the Agricultural Employees Protection Act enables farm workers to form associations but not bargain collectively nor go out on strike.
Raper says their recommendations are designed to provide flexibility for employers and workers and acknowledge that workers “are human beings. They don’t need aggressive policies and programs in place. They’ve proven their worth to their employers.”
Forth challenged a number of the union’s assertions. For example, he says recruiters aren’t involved in the seasonal agricultural worker program. Furthermore, in Ontario there are already mandatory inspections of seasonal agricultural worker program housing by the province’s public health departments.
If there are problems, government officials from a worker’s country, who are based in Canada, can ask the department to re-inspect the housing, he says.
Moreover, under the seasonal agricultural workers program migrant workers can’t be arbitrarily sent home unless the government agent from their country working as a liaison officer in Canada gives permission. “This program has government agents from the workers’ countries that have to approve all those moves,” he says, noting UFCW doesn’t want to acknowledge that.
As for transferable work permits for workers, Forth says workers and employers sign a contract and they both have “moral obligations” to uphold the terms. It’s similar to a hockey player signing a contract to play for a specific team. BF
Comments
Denying agricultural workers the same collective bargaining rights as other workers, simply because they are agricultural workers, is a collective black eye for the farm community and exposes our double standards - we demand equal treatment for ourselves, especially for those many of us who are members of unions when we work off the farm, yet we steadfastly deny to our workers what we enjoy ourselves.
Ken Forth is, no doubt, an honorable person, albeit caught up in a dishonest system where farm workers face discrimination simply because of who their employers happen to be - it's wrong and it needs to change.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Well if that changes then it should be in conjunction with blocking imports of foreign ag products etc. from said cheap labour.
The only real recommendation UFCW cares about is the last one,to join a union!
should shock no one.
With non-government union membership at close to single-digit levels, the only workplaces to be unionized any more are those that deserve it.
Furthermore, any time a farmer and/or his/her spouse takes a job off his/her farm, he/she is entitled to collective bargaining rights denied to farm workers. The ultimate in hypocrisy would be for a supply managed farmer (labour costs simply get added to the cost of production) with a spouse working in a unionized job, wanting to deny workers on the farm the benefits both farm spouses enjoy.
It simply makes no sense for farmers to deny to others what they insist on having themselves and, therefore, it makes perfect sense for the UFCW to keep pointing out the double-standards applying to farm workers, and it makes no sense for farmers to defend them.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
You might find it interesting to see what OFA has to say about ag unions.
If OFA and CFA for that fact want to continue to support SM then they are supporting unions . SM is in all reality a form of an Ag Union where their members get a profit on the backs of people who have to buy their products no matter what the price is here over the world price .
You think retailers in any Country actually set their prices in accordance to what the World prices are ?
Every Country is different!
The inital posting that supply management was a form of unionism designed to protect farmers from the vagarities of world pricing, was entirely-correct and did not merit the rather-vacuous and empty-headed claim about world retailing practices as seen immediately above.
But in response to the claim itself, yes, retailers everywhere (except for supply managed products) set their prices, albeit not entirely, according to world prices - if they didn't, arbitrage would intervene and product would shift from location to location to "level" the playing field.
It's basic economics and common sense, two concepts, alas, not normally found among either anonymous posters or supply management supporters.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
All farmers should be limited to 2 worker dec 1 to april 1 of each year and 7000 foreign worker hours between april 1 and dec 1 at $11.50 per hour above 7,000 hours per year should be $17.25 per hour plus a free ebike to use while in Canada.
They should be able to bring the wife and kids second summer worked in Canada plus get health care
While your at it why not bring all their relatives and give them all free health care , an e-bike and cash for life like all new immigrants !
We can not continue to put 50 men in a bunk house pay them $10.00 per hour plus airplane fare and throw them away when they get hurt. A E-bike is a good way for them to get food unless the employer is going to provide other transportation.
You want some one to get hurt just put them on an e-bike on a road where the traffic most times is running 110 k E-bikes should be confined to dedicated lanes on certain city roads only .
Anonymous comment will be published if resubmitted and signed.
Retailers not so much but what production costs for primary producers should in fact be very close . Any country who exports will be concerned about the world price . Heck even SM in this country tries in all it's hypocrisy to compare their price to world prices . Any other form of agriculture here in Canada has to compete with world prices .
Maybe we need a constitutional challenge to take place . What is really stopping any one from producing milk with out quota ? I am not sure that the Gov gets upset but DFO and DFC sure would .
You need to get out of the house or off the farm once in a while, visit some other Countries. Get something first hand instead of mimicking Mr. Thompson.
I had the pleasure of visiting Australia and New Zealand a few years back, NZ has a very low cost of production and very high retail milk prices.Australia at the time had just deregulated and their prices seemed rather high.
What Canada and the Non-SM has to compete against is every other Country's subsidies,with out those we could compete very well but unfortunately that's not how the World works.Even the US couldn't compete against a low-production cost Country like NZ when it comes to Dairy..hence the Subsidies.
Ironically, I just came back from two weeks in Peru where, on one of my week-long tours, there was a fellow-traveller from New Zealand who, not surprisingly, viewed Canada as the "bad guy" in the recent TPP talks.
He made it abundantly clear that New Zealand has no agricultural subsidies of any kind whatsoever, and that if they could do it, a weenie country like Canada could do it too. His question - "Why should your consumers pay extra for dairy products just because you live in a cold country?" made sense in a way that no amount of protectionist drivel ever could.
As for the views of the poorly-informed anonymous poster immediately above who, apparently, has left Canada only once, and who has apparently never studied economics either here or anywhere else, he/she ignores, for example, any analysis of the subsidies received by US hog and cattle farmers in comparison to the subsidies received by Canadian farmers (effectively none in either country) - the lack of subsidies in either country is "how the world works", yet this sort of comparison seems to never get on to the radar of the protectionist (and anonymous) rabble among us.
Finally, the only time any farmer seems to care about subsidies is when it applies to what we grow here - nobody cares how much orange juice, bananas, pineapples and the plethora of other products we don't grow here are subsidized. Protectionist arguments are always one-sided.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Your NZ buddy didn't mention their higher retail milk prices that are a regular complaint back home.
Just one example of frequent consumer complaints published in major NZ newspapers
Link at https://keithwoodford.wordpress.com/2014/04/02/why-is-new-zealands-retai...
Headline - Why is New Zealand's retail milk so expensive
First paragraph....
Visitors to New Zealand often ask me why our supermarket milk is so expensive compared to in their own countries. I tell them the answer is simple. First, we have little competition, with only two milk major processors (Fonterra and Goodman Fielder) and two major supermarket chains (Foodstuffs and Progressive). Also, unlike most other countries, the Government in New Zealand does tax food. Both answers are typically received with surprise.
Later in the article...
In Canada one would expect milk to be expensive. This is because they have a supply management scheme to protect farm level prices, and their farmers are paid about Canadian 80c per litre. However, when bought in 2 litre and larger packs, it only costs about $1.50 per litre at the supermarket. That equates to about $NZ1.60 per litre at current exchange rates. So even in Canada, the consumer can buy milk for less than the cheapest New Zealand milk.
That's the view from NZ. Funny, eh?
Also, Not sure why a guy from a tiny little country less than one-quarter the size of Ontario with only 4.5 million people would think of Canada with our 37 million consumers and a G8 economy a weenie country - maybe a small man/country syndrome?
When anonymous supply managed simpletons fall all over themselves to try to bolster the idiocy of supply management by comparing Kiwi retail prices of milk to ours, they studiously ignore any consideration of how much more the retail price of milk would be in New Zealand if they had kept farm gate prices artificially-high like we do here - it's called "comparing apples to apples", and it's a concept studiously ignored by supply management advocates.
Supply managed simpletons also ingore geography by forgetting that New Zealand consumers can't simply drive across the border into Australia to get cheaper milk the way many Canadian consumers can drive into the US to get theirs.
And, of course, the above poster:
(A) heaps all the usual dismissive scorn about the puny size of New Zealand from behind the shield of anonymity.
(B) ignores that it isn't the retail price of milk in New Zealand that poses the problem for the Canadian dairy industry, it's the wholesale price.
Ah, yes, another day, another anonymous "whack-a-mole" supply management supporter left naked in the rubble of his/her irrelevancies and inconsistencies.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Let's say you're the head of a country in the middle of the south Pacific, you have about 4 million people, few natural resources except grass, you import your energy and pretty-much all of your consumer products because you have too small and too isolated a population to justify much, if any manufacturing, and you don't have anything to export except dairy and ovine products.
Let's also say that you're sinking under a debt load of supporting a domestic dairy industry, and your national balance of payments deficit is mushrooming, and consumers (as well as the international financial community) are tired of it all.
The answer is to avert the impending "fiscal cliff" by abolishing all subsidies and export those things you can produce best, and that is dairy products. That is precisely what New Zealand did, and why they did it.
Had New Zealand not abolished subsidies and protection for its farmers, the country would have been as much of a basket case as Greece is now - therefore, for Canadian supply management supporters to use the "narrow as the head of a pin" argument about current retail milk prices in New Zealand as a way of defending supply management, miss the point that retail milk prices represent the "least-worst" of a whole lot of unpalatable things that would have happened in New Zealand if support for New Zealand dairy farmers not ended.
The point, as always, when it comes to economics and civilization itself, comes down to the simple question - "Why make it when you can buy it cheaper?"
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
You're first line says it all,"a Country in the middle of the South Pacific"..NOT sitting next to a Country with a population well over 300 million and having just passed a $950 Billion farm Bill.What exactly did the NZ Government have to protect their Dairy farmers against ?
By subsidizing its dairy farmers, New Zealand was protecting them from the reality that any country, like any business, eventually has to pay its bills.
New Zealand discovered, as will Canada, that protectionism is a guarantee of economic stagnation, if not also outright economic collapse.
New Zealand's dairy industry, and the outright fear it instills in Canadian dairy farmers, is an example of how comparative advantage should, and does work - indeed, why should we "make" milk here when we can buy it cheaper?
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
When traveling abroad l have noticed a good amount of Canadians like to attach a Canada flag to there luggage, some even go to extremes of slapping our flag in numerous other places, not so much to identify us as Canadian but more so as not Americans!
The Australians and New Zealanders are friendly people but the farmers l talked to would in no way trade places with their Canadian counterparts.Simply put, not to be next to a Trade bully like the US and certainly not without some kind of protection or level playing field subsidies..which brings us to the point of why we have Supply Management in Canada and why it has worked so well for 50 years, even the folks down under regonize that.
In response to "The bigger picture tells the story" http://betterfarming.com/comment/17345#comment-17345
I agree with all that Mr. Thompson wrote, but would like to add some additional details about NZ and Fonterra.
About 95% of NZ's dairy products get exported. The tail wags the dog at this elevated level of export market shares. Fonterra is more concerned about world prices than the domestic dairy prices that they essentially dictate.
With only 5% attention span of Fonterra for domestic markets, I suspect some NZ'ers feel the export markets get the best service, quality, and quantity, while the citizens of NZ get what's left over.
When Fonterra was formed in Oct. 2001, they processed 96% of NZ's milk supply. Fonterrra only had two competitors, Westland Milk Products on the West Coast and Tatua Cooperative Dairy Company in Morrinsville, Waikato.
From 1990, NZ dairy exports have grown from NZ$2.1 Billion to NZ$15.5 Billion in 2014. That's an average growth rate of 8.8% per year, doubling and re-doubling in size every 8 years.
In the same time period, Canadian dairy exports went from CDN$196.5 Million to CDN$281 Million. That's an average growth rate of 1.5% per year, doubling and re-doubling in size every 47 years.
Note that Canada and its SM system had just 17% of the growth that NZ's dairy farmers enjoyed. That's quite a difference! The other 83% of the potentially available growth that Canada could have had was pissed into the wind by SM's dysfunctional thinking and actions.
The number of Canadian dairy farms has dropped from 25,825 in 1993, to 12,430 in 2011; a 4% per year average drop, halfing and re-halfing every 18 years.
In 2014, there is only 11,962 dairy farms left in Canada, another 1.3% drop from 2011. Like the passenger pigeon decimation in the early 1900's, the dairy death rate continues, right up to extinction. This isn't good news, it's just how extinctions tend to occur.
Remind me again why Canada's SM farmers prefer to be fat, dumb, happy, and eventually extinct by relying upon their dysfunctional SM system that has already fossilized most of the Canadian dairy industry.
The Canadian dairy industry doesn't need protection from the other dairy competitors who produce better, safer, and healthier milk. That shipped sailed long ago.
Today, the Canadian dairy industry needs the government to step in and protect Canada's dairy industry from its suicidal self.
Unfortunately, as bad as Canadian dairy is, chicken SM is even worse; a raving psychotic with a loaded gun who is a danger to themselves and all other Canadians.
Glenn Black, President
Small Flock Poultry Farmers of Canada
In spite of the obvious flaws in supply management, and in spite of the fact that these flaws are growing at an exponential rate, anonymous posters on this site STILL pontificate about how well supply management has worked for the past fifty years.
These isolated-from reality individuals will never, alas, understand why, even in the farm community, supply management is not well-liked and will not be missed.
Too bad for them, too bad for us all
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Yes, it is frustrating that posters pontificate on this site.
That is something not well-liked by many and would not be missed.
You and Mr. Thompson on here have continuously "flogged the horse" about how Canadian consumers are being ripped off on high dairy prices and yet when someone comes along and points out that another Country with no SM and no Quota's has equally or higher consumer milk prices its "Oh what a great job their Industry is doing" Well at this point its not doing so good!
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/72976111/dairy-downturn-costs-ne...
Also,the dairy farmers in Europe at the moment are not protesting and parading in the streets because there are happy with deregulation of their Industry,quite the opposite!
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/06/uk-farmers-join-bruss...
They all want the same thing, to be able to fill the domestic market and produce as much milk as they can for export with no consequences and of course when that fails and over production is rampant,expect the Government to bail them out.
You two have the blinders on so bad, you make it very easy for Supply Management farmers and those related to the Industry to say to people, just look around the world as to whats happening in the Industry, is that what we want in this Country ?? and its no wonder why voters were saying NO to the Conservatives in not trading away SM.
Mr. Beuerman and I subscribe to the belief that "Evil prevails when good men do nothing" and thus, we continually point out the many weaknesses of/evils of supply management and the double-standards in and/or limitations in the "thinking(?)" of the less-enlightened who blindly support it.
One of the best examples of the convoluted "logic" (this time in the form of a double-negative) infecting the minds of anonymous supply management supporters comes in the last statement of the above posting - "its (sic) no wonder why voters were saying NO to the Conservatives in not trading away SM."
When the rules of grammar are applied, voters said NO to the Conservatives because they didn't trade away supply management which means that voters want supply management gone. Although the above anonymous poster probably didn't want to say that voters wanted supply management gone, that's exactly what he/she posted.
In addition, the above anonymous poster seems to be so busy trying to find straws to grasp in defense of supply management that he/she seems to have ignored the fact that New Zealand dairy farmers don't get government bail-outs, and remember all-too-well the problems that country faced when they did.
Furthermore, the above poster (and supply management supporters everywhere) still can't grasp the cost/volume/profit relationship underlying the fixed and variable costs of processing, distributing and retailing milk in a micro-market of 4.5 million people on two different islands. Even if milk was free at the farm gate, there aren't enough economies of scale in that small and that geographically-dispersed a market to enable any sort of retail price similarity between the New Zealand market and our markets which are many times that size.
Why can't anonymous supply management supporters ever proof-read (and/or even think about) the gibberish they write before they push SEND?
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
" its no wonder why voters were saying NO to the Conservatives in not trading away SM"
Give me a break!
Take a look at the map of SW Ont farmland...it's painted Tory Blue.
In fact most of rural Canada voted Conservative...and they are the ones that actually understand the abuse SM heaps on the rest of us.
Who has blinders on?
Unfortunately for the Conservatives they failed to understand were the majority of support for Supply Management comes from,consumers living in cities! Certainly not small voter numbers in SW Ontario.The Conservatives new just days before the Election they were heading for defeat,the last minute TPP agreement was meant to consolidate their home turf in the prairies,which it did but didn't fool anyone else.
Actually it means a lot...but as a SM supporter your unable to see it...yet.
SM has no support from those that actually understand how we're being hoodwinked!
Quote: he/she ignores, for example, any analysis of the subsidies received by US hog and cattle farmers in comparison to the subsidies received by Canadian farmers (effectively none in either country) - the lack of subsidies in either country is "how the world works",
Canadian and US hog farmers get effectively no subsidies or tariff protection, especially when compared to what grains farmers get in the US and what supply managed farmers get here. It isn't fair to non-supply managed farmers here and it isn't fair to livestock and hog producers in the US, but that's how the world works.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
While you are correct about the U.S. hog farmers getting essentially no subsidies, to even suggest that Ontario and Quebec hog producers get very little in subsidies is blatantly false. Ontario-Quebec and to a lesser extent Manitoba Hog producers, as with most farmers are their own worst enemy. When times are good they over-expand and overproduce. Then when prices collapse because of said overproduction they want Tripartite, NISA-CAIS-OFIDIP-AGRIVIEST-AGRISTABILITY-HOG BUYOUTS, plus ASRA. ! No wonder the U.S. National pork producers claim that Canada strongly insulates it's hog producers from market realities. Now add in non-transparent Hog-RMP payments and as Ritz suggested the U.S. Hog industry certainly has reason to be a tad upset.
Mr.Thompson omitted the 50 Million in the Federal Cull Breeding Swine Program and 75 Million in the Hog Transition Program.
Presumably they were gifts not subsidies! wow!
What's 50 million and/or 75 million when compared to over $3 billion in recently-announced federal subsidies for approximately 16,000 supply managed farmers, on top of what they already receive in the form of day-to-day consumer financed subsidies?
As stated before, Canadian and US hog farmers receive almost nothing in subsidies either in absolute terms or in comparative terms with each other - both are dwarfed by the direct subsidies (and indirect subsidies arising from ethanol mandates) grain farmers get in the US and the consumer-financed subsidies supply managed farmers get here.
Sigh, why can't anonymous supply management supporters develop comparative analytical abilities?
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Nice try at deflecting from the truth, however the 75 million the previous poster mentioned was for just one buyout program which attempted to stop the overproduction and resulting low prices that producers created. What is it about the multitude of other non-transparent hog programs that you can't understand. Programs such as Tripartite, NISA-CAIS-OFIDIP-AGRIVIEST-AGRISTABILITY-HOG BUYOUTS, plus ASRA. ! No wonder the U.S. National pork producers claim that Canada strongly insulates it's hog producers from market realities. Now add in non-transparent Hog-RMP payments and as Ritz suggested the U.S. Hog industry including the NPPC certainly has reason to be a tad upset. Not saying those programs are wrong for those in Canada, just saying they need to be more transparent so that we could separate the wheat from the chaff for full transparency. Then again, if they were truly fully transparent then U.S. pork producers would really be upset as Ritz has suggested.
It seems Mr. Thompson is lost in "Peanuts Land " . At least from where I sit when reading the comment it is obvious that Thompson missed the point which is Canadian hog producers have been taking billions to the bank when US hog producers have not .
Sighhhh
While dim-witted anonymous posters have waxed eloquent about the differences between US and Canadian hog support programs, the real enemy is still supply management and the proper focus can be re-established (even for the dim-witted) by reading an October 16, 2015 Globe and Mail article by Konrad Yakabuski.
Yakabuski quotes Andrew Hoggard, dairy industry chairman at the Federated Farmers of New Zealand, who scoffed in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corp - "Well, hang on, how come the beef farmers, and the arable farmers and the pork farmers can all handle the big wide world and yet you guys (Canadian dairy farmers) are still clutching to the apron strings and refusing to put on the big kiddie pants?"
Yakabuski quite-accurately noted that TPP was a missed opportunity for truly freer dairy trade, meaning that supply management will remain the biggest problem (and source of farmer-to-farmer friction) in Canadian agriculture for at least the next generation.
Appointing a career back-bencher member of the last generation to be federal agriculture Minister also means that the concerns of the younger generation of non-supply managed farmers won't be heard for at least another four years, by which time it could be too late for an entire generation of aspiring Canadian farmers.
Since, thanks to supply management, I already don't have any farm income tax filers under the age of 35 (except for the Amish) and am not aware of any non-supply managed farmers under the age of 35 in my municipality of Central Huron, it's probably already too late for many millenials now.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Anonymous comment deleted by editor.
I guess we all can assume you don't really want a serious debate on the generous subsidies this Country has heaped on the Pork Industry.Obviously you must be getting all your information from Mr.Hoggard, he sounds like an expert in the Canadian Beef and Pork Industry, maybe he is wasting his time in New Zealand Dairy ?
Truth be told, what your buddy friend at the G&M probably didn't say is that former PM Harper and the Conservatives in their haste to bring a TPP agreement before the voters of this Country probably secured the future of Supply Management for another 50 years or longer, for if $4.3 Billion is being offered as compensation for 3.5% of our market then there isn't a politician now or in the future that wants to add up what total dismantling of SM would be worth.Even if the Liberals decide not to ratify TPP (and doubt is starting) that 4.3 figure has been introduced for future reference.
First No Canadian Hog programs, now an admission of Differences!
For a second there, I thought you were going to deny Canadian Hog producers got bucks from Hog Tripartite, Hog NISA, Hog OFIDIP, Hog CAIS, Hog Agri-Invest, Hog Agri-Stability, Hog buyout program, plus non-transparent Hog RMP and ASRA. Apparently, the U.S. NPPC has said on many occasions that in total these support programs do indeed insulate Canadian Hog producers from market realities and that U.S hog producers want these Canadian hog subsidies stopped in order to level the playing field.
My comment about which a plethora of anonymous commentators has waxed wroth was - "Canadian and US hog farmers get effectively no subsidies or tariff protection, especially when compared to what grain farmers get in the US and what supply managed farmers get here."
That anonymous illiterates on this site could immediately conclude that:
(1) I denied that Canadian hog producers get subsidies
(2) I denied the existence of differences between Canadian and US hog programs
(3) I am somehow flip-flopping.
is the sort of leap-of-illogical and unfounded faith most-often made by quota owners and those who possess no common sense and/or economic acuity.
The unvarnished truth these anonymous economic illiterates studiously deny is that whatever paltry subsidy programs Canadian hog farmers actually do receive are little more than "supply management injury assistance programs" and/or "ethanol injury assistance programs" and that they pale in comparison to the untold fortunes supply managed farmers and grains farmers legally extort from the market thanks to the legislated entitlements of supply management and ethanol mandates.
In addition, when it comes to a "level playing field", the easiest and best way to do that, especially for hog farmers, would be to eliminate supply management and ethanol mandates.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Just to be equal we would have to only get rid of SM here . Pretty sure the US has ethanol also .
Paltry? Not according to the NPPC. The NPPC states Canadian hog subsidies are huge and do indeed distort trade. Link: http://www.nppc.org/2012/06/stop-subsidizing-hog-production-nppc-asks-ca...
In exactly the same way:
(1) the Dairy Farmers of Canada claims supply management doesn't increase the price of food
(2) the Grain Farmers of Ontario claims neonicotinoids are benign to bees
(3) the National Farmers Union blames most of agriculture's woes on multi-national corporations
the NPPC, another vested interest, makes claims equally as far-fetched and as self-serving as DFC, GFO and the NFU, and anonymous posters on this site, always prepared to grasp at the flimsiest of straws, fall for yet another half-truth.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Billions to the bank????
As a hog producer, the payments I've received on hogs is no where near what I have received in crop payments from Ethanol...although that's a wash since I have to feed those hogs.
Ethanol payments come in a brown envelope with Gov of Canada stamped on the front of the cheque ? Hhmmm news to me . I don't get gov cheques as a cash crop farmer but do have to compete against other local farmers who get/got a pork buy out program , OCHPP and many more along with SM farmers . Oh and other farmers from the USA and beyond whose gov support them and their livestock farmers .
Surely I don't have to explain how you or I receive Ethanol payments...I'll assume you're just pretending not to know.
Cash crop farmers certainly do get gov't cheques and you know that too...at least we'll assume you realize that.
I sell my corn Non GMO into a feed market . Don't have crop ins or any other gov programs . You want to assume more or have you made ass enough of yourself ?
Livestock has been on the money wagon right up there with SM for decades .
So as a crop farmer you've never received any gov't money...no crop ins...no rmp...no Nisa...no AgriInvest?
Wow...I've never heard of such a thing, but I am impressed...except that I can't understand anybody turning down the AgriInvest free money.
Are you sure you've never gotten any gov't money?
"Don't have crop ins or any other gov programs"
Ethanol IS a government program. Get it now?
I highly recommend you remain anonymous to prevent total public shaming of yourself.
Raube Beuerman
So you pay Full tax assessment on your farms instead of Farm Rate? No NISA, No Agri-Invest either???
One of these anonymous posters is in denial as to how ethanol is a form of government support.
Will the anonymous poster who made these fatuous remarks please address them.
Raube Beuerman
First off i don't sell into an ethanol plant so I don't get ethanol money .
As a farmer I don't pay farm "taxe" rate I pay the Farm Property Class Tax Rate . It is a tax not a subsidy . Hence the reason tax is part of the name !
You really need to know what you are talking about before you shoot yourself into shame . I do not participate in any other programs . It is my choice so get over it .
Anonymous comment modified by editor.
All that matters is that government has created a market that otherwise would not exist through ethanol mandates, therefore influencing the price in both the basis and Chicago price.
Please educate yourself before making nonsensical remarks.
Raube Beuerman
So I should be getting RMP cheques since my corn went to a non gmo feed market and that farmer could be getting RMP cheques .
Ethanol would still exist with out a mandate so you are wrong . Same as hogs would still exist even if no one ate pork . Some one would raise them as pets and for medical purposes .
More so I am the victim of pork support programs . Not only do I have to pay for my pork , I also have to pay for their support programs .
One doesn't need to sell corn directly to an ethanol plant to take advantage of the increased price every corn grower enjoys because of ethanol mandates. It's like this, if ethanol mandates didn't cause up to 40% of the US corn crop to be diverted into ethanol, the farm gate price of corn would be just that much lower - the difference between the farm gate price of corn with ethanol mandates and without ethanol mandates measures the "subsidy" every grain farmer receives because of ethanol mandates. Therefore, the above anonymous corn seller is very-much subsidized by ethanol mandates in spite of her/his protestations to the contrary - and, sorry anonymous poster, it's basic economics and not open to either debate or discussion.
The farm property tax concession is also a subsidy to farmers, coming in the form of an "avoided cost benefit" which is, by definition, also very much a subsidy. This subsidy is very-much understood to be a subsidy by those who, for one reason or another, forget to register one year and find themselves paying the higher rate of tax - therefore, the concessionary rate of property tax paid by farmers who register for the program is very-much a subsidy and also isn't open to either debate or discussion.
It is, indeed, tragic to see anyone who, like the above anonymous poster, posts gibberish that flies in the face of basic and undeniable economic principles, and even worse, takes issue with those who do understand economics when posting his/her economic fallacies.
Finally, the above anonymous poster vividly demonstrates why anonymous postings are a form of "Witless protection program" in that being anonymous protects the witless from being identified.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Raube has stated above that he gets no gov't subsidies, yet you claim the property tax concession is a subsidy. Raube has stated previously he still owns 2 farms.
Provide a link(s) as to where I said any of what you have just posted.
The idiocy of anonymous posters reaches all-time new highs.
The most disappointing aspect of the above relatively short posting is that my name was written 3 times, yet the posters name was not written once.
Raube Beuerman
"Don't have crop ins or any
"Don't have crop ins or any other gov programs"
So, if you still own 2 farms, then per the Stephen T. subsidy definition above, you are either receiving a subsidy on your farms or you are paying full rate.
Yes, I do get the reduced tax rate, after I pay a farm group fee.
So many breaks for us farmers it is hard to keep track of them all.
Although, I was correct in stating that I do not participate in crop insurance, which means I don't qualify for RMP.
Raube Beuerman
A subsidy pays out it does not discount Sighhh
A subsidy can be either a payment or an avoided cost as long as both are benefits accruing because of government policies. Therefore, a subsidy is any benefit accruing because of legislative entitlement, regardless who pays.
This is basic economics and not open to debate or discussion.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
The Government requires all it's citizens to file an income tax form. By extension of what you write then all tax preparers are 100% subsidized as well. If that is as basic as it is than that is absolutely not debatable as well.
The Government of Canada does NOT require every Canadian citizen to file an income tax return - the only people required to file a tax return are those who:
(1) owe money
(2) have realized a capital gain
(3) receive a request from the Canada Revenue Agency to file a return.
Oodles of people do not file an income tax return for whatever reason, and those who do file a return are entitled to, and often do, prepare their own returns. One of my now-deceased farm clients didn't file an income tax return for over 20 years and suffered no consequences for it - I went on to prepare returns for him for the rest of his life and not once did the Canada Revenue Agency ask about the 20 years he didn't file.
Therefore, since there is no mandatory requirement to file an income tax return, and since there is no requirement to hire someone to prepare any income tax return, tax preparers are NOT subsidized, but are offering a service to those who choose to wish to avail themselves of those services.
Even if there was a mandatory requirement to file income tax returns, and even if there was a mandatory requirement to hire someone to prepare it, many tax preparers, myself included, do not charge on a "cost-or-production" model and, as well, we often have deep-discount rates for poor people and sometimes charge nothing at all - How could we be subsidized if/when we do something for free?
Contrast that to Canadian-produced dairy and poultry products which, by law, are the only dairy and poultry products offered in Canadian stores and, unlike in the income tax preparation business, poor people don't get a break.
The grinding stupidity and deliberate obtuseness of anonymous posters on this site is beginning to become really-offensive - the "witless" protection aspect of anonymous postings is becoming ever more-apparent.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
and they don't have to file taxes either . Sounds like a real good gig they got going there . Now are you sure your info is correct ?
So now you need to claim that SM helps you since it keeps the price/value of your farm land up . So SM is of benefit to you even though you say it is net negative .
Any sort of legislated entitlement that drives the price of farm land to 50:1 price/earnings multiples, such as supply management has done, especially dairy because of the inability of quota, is net-negative beyond the shadow of a doubt because, just like in supply management itself, all the benefits accrue to the first-generation while simply adding additional costs for the next - and that structural imbalance in favour of the first generation is the epitome of net-negative and just another reason why supply management is not well-liked and will not be missed.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
I think the title sums it up .
When you use price over earning to value farmland you have to look at both factors. So far you have only used the price factor as moveable but earning are equally as important. If earnings say tripled your ratio would fall to 12.5 to 1 which is a workable ratio. When you factor the time spent, management expertise and asset value (excluding quota), dairy farm managers are significantly under valued. SM offers a negotiated price. So you can either argue to abolish SM and let the p/e multiples fall to 100:1 or support SM and achieve lower p/e. Be the economist and use sound reasoning
An anonymous poster wants to exclude the single biggest cost to justify his/her argument. Go figure.
I'm not swallowing what these anonymous posters are cooking,(no sane person would) but they should try some of my gourmet cooking.
Raube Beuerman
Will that be raw pig rectum like on fear factor or hash brownies ?
Quota is a non-tangible asset. It's value is in being coupled with a tangible asset. All tangible assets have value on their own. But hey if you want to put it in the price/earnings equation it will make it even more lopsided. What does cooking have to do with it?, you lost me there.
Often times non-tangible assets create tangible asset costs for farmers of other commodities.
For example, the capping of dairy quota, which according to you is a non-tangible asset, increased tangible costs(land) to all other farmers.
Therefore, to state price to earnings numbers without factoring quota costs, is something you literally, can't take to the bank.
Raube Beuerman
Maybe you should have invited him here..in say February..our Kiwi vines should be in full bloom about then!
Every non SM farmer in Canada has to compete against other countries subsidies and Canadian SM farmers .
Now to the real truth , SM farmers will also be subsidized under TPP so we here get hit twice from SM farmers .
Further SM farmers will no longer be able to say they paid from the market place !
TPP is not even fully ratified,nor does it have the full endorsement of the incoming Liberals. Lets not be counting up the dollars just yet...even CETA is not ratified yet, and all that potential windfall of Pork and Beef exports is still just a pipe dream.
If we can have a double standard for SM in this province and country then all other Ag in Ontario & Canada should also get the same double standard pricing too ! We as farmers too have to buy and compete with SM and not allowed to have the same pricing system with profitability built in .
Let's see if the new Liberal leader is a real leader .
So you're OK now with supply management as long all farm workers are unionized? Unionized or not I thought the point here was to set workplace standards.
There's no possible way anyone, except an anonymous poster on this site, could ever possibly interpret my comments as any sort of support for supply management.
I tried to make it quiite clear that one of the great-many, if not the worst, double standards favoured by the agricultural industry was our ability to see no problem denying collective bargaining rights to farm workers at the same time we, especially supply managed farmers, fall all over ourselves to demand these rights (and more) for ourselves.
That so many farmers demand collective bargaining rights for ourselves through the auspices of supply management, but turn around and deny the same rights for the people who work for us, and see nothing incongrous about doing so, makes all of agriculture look bad.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Any farmer bring offshore workers should be made to live in the bunkhouse under the same conditions as the offshore workers Some farmers treat their offshore workers as good as their own kids. Many others do not Stephen Webster
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