Sidebar 1: Quebec agriculture - a history of intervention

Sunday, April 5, 2009

The reason why Quebec intervenes to the extent it does in agriculture is deeply rooted in history, says Daniel-Mercier Gouin, professor of agro-economy at Université Laval. "For good or bad, whether it has chosen to use the right tool or not, the province decided to encourage agriculture as a prime economic activity."

In return, farmers have always tended to turn to the provincial government for all agriculture related matters. They do so using one very powerful voice, the Union des Producteurs Agricole (UPA), a producer's union with mandatory dues for all farmers, but for which 94 per cent of farmers belong to on a voluntary basis.

From the early 1980s until the early '90s, Quebec dominated the Canadian hog industry and produced quality pork for the domestic market as well as lucrative foreign markets in the United States and Japan. But slowly, hog producers in other countries caught up to Quebec producers by modernizing their operations and becoming more efficient. Quebec lost its competitive advantage and the higher Canadian dollar hurt exports. BP