My farmers wanted predictability and stability': Mitchell

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

Ontario Agriculture Minister Carol Mitchell has ordered the pork industry to complete details of a new marketing plan by Dec. 4 of this year. The result will be more open marketing of hogs.

Under the principles Mitchell made public today, farmers will have two choices. They can sell pigs through an intermediary such as the Ontario Pork Producers Marketing Board, or directly to processors.

Ontario Pork loses its power to review all buyer and seller contracts. Under the new plan, the marketing board will review buyer and sell contracts only when requested by either party.

The pork board retains the power to collect and share price data.

The board will be extended the power to collect fees on all classes of hogs.

Ontario Pork will no longer exist as it is known. Mitchell ordered the board to “administratively separate its marketing side from its regulatory side to eliminate any potential conflict of interest and/or bias issues of being both the regulator and the regulated.”

Mitchell had reviewed a Farm Products Appeal Tribunal decision last February overturning a 2008 Farm Products Marketing Commission decision that had stripped Ontario Pork of its powers.

In February, the Tribunal ordered the industry to sort things out in 18 months. Mitchell said that was taking too long.

"I know my farmers wanted predictability and stability," Mitchell says. "The industry has certainly been facing struggles. This was impeding their ability to move forward with their strategy.”

The Commission and the marketing board will develop an implementation plan and they will be required to consult with the industry stakeholders on this plan. The method of consultation will be decided by the commission and the marketing board. The province will work with the industry to develop a financial protection plan modeled on plans existing for grain and livestock industries.  Mitchell described that plan as “cost effective, sensitive to an ‘open for business’ environment and . . . broadly supported by the industry.

“Both the Commission and the Tribunal agreed that a more open market system was needed in the pork industry. They just differed on the ways of getting there,” Mitchell says.

The minister says her decision doesn’t mean she doesn’t have confidence in the Tribunal.

“As the Tribunal readily pointed out in its decision, the adversarial process is not necessarily well-suited for resolving complex policy-laden questions.”

The Minister confirmed the Tribunal’s ruling that the Commission appoint a new chair to the Hog Industry Advisory Committee and require it to operate within revised regulations 419 and slammed the Commission while she did so.

“Although the Commission enacted Reg. 419, this does not mean that the Commission can simply ‘ignore’ its statutory obligations.  The Commission is, just as every other government agency is, required to comply with all applicable legislative requirements.  If the Commission believes that HIAC would be more effective if constituted differently, the answer is to amend Reg. 419.”

Mitchell found merit in the pork board’s suggestion that producers be licensed. The board could use the license for traceability purposes and also to enforce and collect marketing fees.

"We have been in favour of producers having choice in marketing and this gives us the solid footing to implement from," says Wilma Jeffray, Ontario Pork's chair. BF