Groups want Chicken Farmers of Ontario to increase quota-free limit

Thursday, December 13, 2012

by SUSAN MANN

Two groups involved in a campaign to increase the number of chickens farmers can raise without quota have a hearing before the Chicken Farmers of Ontario board next week.

Practical Farmers of Ontario and Sustain Ontario have launched the campaign to get Chicken Farmers of Ontario to increase the number of meat chickens farmers can produce annually without quota to 2,000 from 300. In addition to increasing the quota-free limit, Practical Farmers president Sean McGivern says they are also asking Chicken Farmers to allow small flock growers to sell beyond their farmgate.

The hearing will be held at the Chicken Farmers office in Burlington Dec. 20. McGivern says Chicken Farmers has already turned down a similar request from them in September. He sent that request by letter.

McGivern says if their request is denied again after the hearing, they’ll file an appeal with the Ontario Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Appeal Tribunal.

Chicken Farmers couldn’t be reached for comment.

But Dr. Gwen Zellen, Chicken Farmers vice president, says in a Sept. 18 letter responding to McGivern and posted on the Practical Farmers website that the board has recently reviewed the small flock regulation and it supports “the current value of the regulation for disease management.”

Practical Farmers is involved in the campaign because members at the group’s inaugural annual meeting in March requested it work on this project. The group was formed this year and has 200 members. Sustain Ontario is a provincial alliance of more than 350 member organizations that describes its goal as working towards a food system that is healthy, ecological, equitable and financially viable.

Sustain Ontario director Ravenna Nuaimy-Barker says they’re involved because they’re concerned that people have good food to eat and farmers are able to make a living farming. She says even though the alliance supports supply management, members are concerned the system hampers small scale and diversified farmers from reaching their market for birds raised in variety of different ways.

“It’s primarily farmers that are coming to us who aren’t growing large number of birds but who are part of a diversified farm that have chickens and they have a market for those chickens,” she says.

The groups say neither of the Chicken Farmers’ options work for smaller, diversified growers or new farmers trying to fill specific markets. Those options are buying the minimum 14,000 units of quota required by Chicken Farmers to produce meat (broiler) birds in Ontario or just produce the 300 birds annually allowed quota free for personal consumption or sale at the farm gate.

Meaford-area farmer Gerald Te Velde is a case in point. Te Velde wants to raise pastured chickens to sell at farmers’ markets, which current Chicken Farmers rules prohibit.

Te Velde says he raises grass-fed beef, lamb and pastured pigs along with five acres of vegetables, sells at farmers’ markets in Toronto, Collingwood and Meaford and takes orders and delivers his meats in the winter. He hasn’t been raising any meat chickens for sales, just for personal consumption. But he has been trying to expand into poultry with ducks and turkey, and wants to add meat chickens to his product list.

Te Velde says raising just 300 chickens isn’t worth it “for the type of operation we’re trying to do here. For small farms to make chicken a viable enterprise on their farm, 300 birds isn’t going to do a whole lot. It’s hardly a hobby.”

Buying 14,000 minimum quota units would cost $1.75 million, according to Practical Farmers and Sustain Ontario, and enable him to produce about 90,000 birds a year.

Te Velde says that’s too many birds for his operation. He says the board’s existing rules won’t allow him to sell the birds directly to his customers. Sustain Ontario says in a Dec. 10 press release the quota costs are too expensive for small, diversified farmers.

The two groups say they still support of the concept of supply management. “We’re not saying we need to end supply management,” McGivern notes. “We’re saying supply management needs to come to the table and work with small farmers rather than putting up stumbling blocks.”

McGivern says they’re requesting the quota-free amount be 2,000 birds because that is what most other Canadian provinces have, such as Alberta and British Columbia. He says Ontario’s quota free limit is currently the lowest across Canada.

As for the Chicken Farmers’ new entrant program and other new entrant programs in supply-managed commodities, McGivern says those efforts are ineffective in encouraging young and new farmers to get into those industries.

Te Velde says the income farmers can expect from raising 2,000 birds depends on “how you’re raising them.” He doesn’t feed any corn and soybeans so it takes longer for him to raise birds. Part of their birds’ diet comes from grass in the pasture, along with bugs, worms and grains, such as oats, barley and peas.

The movement to increase the number of chickens farmers can raise without quota went into high gear this week after Sustain Ontario kicked off its ‘Are We Too Chicken?’ campaign. As part of it, Sustain Ontario sent out postcards to farmers markets, organizations and concerned citizens across Ontario addressed to Geri Kamenz, chair of the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission. The cards ask him to work with Chicken Farmers of Ontario and other stakeholders to increase the number of chickens farmers can raise quota free.

Zellen says Chicken Farmers currently has 13,000 growers documented in its small flock registry. The majority of small flocks are grown for personal consumption. From 2009 to 2011, the average flock was less than 56 birds. BF