by SUSAN MANN
A year after dairy farmer representatives tried to kick start negotiations with processors on a wide-ranging plan to revamp the industry’s pricing and policy framework, talks have yet to begin.
Dairy Farmers of Ontario told delegates at the spring policy conference in Alliston at the end of March negotiations were to start this month. That’s about a year after dairy farmers representatives in each province first presented the eight-element plan to each province’s processor organization. Negotiations were originally slated to begin last year and Dairy Farmers representatives said last year the plan was a priority for the organization.
But Peter Gould, CEO and general manager of Dairy Farmers of Ontario, says negotiations haven’t started yet “and we don’t know when they’re going to start.”
The start to negotiations is stalled because “we haven’t agreed on some of the preliminary matters,” Gould explains. He declined to elaborate.
But people are working diligently to get the negotiations started, he says.
Gould is one of two people from Ontario (the other is DFO chair Ralph Dietrich) on both the 10-member producer negotiating team and on the producer steering committee that oversees and directs the team. Representatives on the team include two members each from: the region of the Atlantic provinces, Quebec, Ontario, the region of the Western provinces and national representation coming from Dairy Farmers of Canada. The producer steering committee is made up of the chairs and general managers from the 10 provincial marketing boards plus the Dairy Farmers of Canada chair and executive director.
A seven-member technical committee made up of representatives from the same regions as the producer negotiating team supports the producer steering committee. DFO senior policy adviser Phil Cairns and DFO economist Patrice Dube are the Ontario representatives on the technical committee.
Gould says there are no immediate impacts to the industry or farmers due to the delayed start in negotiations but “it’s important to get this thing resolved.”
In a Dairy Farmers of Ontario document released at the organization’s spring policy conference it says the industry “is approaching a crossroads beyond which the existing policy framework is no longer sustainable.”
The industry needs a “more competitive market environment within the existing domestic pricing and milk classification system” to reduce the industry’s reliance on the Canadian Dairy Commission’s surplus removal program, the document says. The industry also needs to ensure continued milk use at existing domestic price levels in Class 1-3, which are the fluid milk, yogurt and yogurt beverages, ice cream, frozen yogurt, sour cream and cheese classes.
Milk sold to processors in Canada is classified and priced according to its end use. The classes range from fluid milks (Class 1) to planned exports (Class 5d). BF
Comments
milk prices should drop to 50 cents per liter to the farmer and a top of $150.00 per day per dairy farmer to paid for out of the fluid milk surcharge. Non profits (school lunch program, homeless shelter food banks should milk at 50 cents per liter)
The dairy industry should not be setting milk prices more than 10% more than U.S. milk prices. The gov should provide a Green Program limited to $10,000 per farm unit per year in income assistance. this would be cheaper than the current Quota system
Title is correct but missing comma to make sense of title, as well as picture of a stall is misleading since this is a policy issue.
Nothing could more-aptly portray:
(A) the current sorry state of the Canadian dairy industry
(B) the mindset of the people who run it
than a picture of a cow "lying down on the job".
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
A cow lying down is making milk. She is doing her job. Nothing sums up the strengths of our dairy industry like a cow calmly making milk with a full belly. Try again.
Nothing says "hitting a home-run" quite like somebody taking issue with the most-minute and least-relevant detail of something.
The above poster is obviously completely-unable to deal with the reality that the entire Canadian dairy industy, including this cow, is "lying-down on the job" and is lashing out in anonymous frustration at how aptly a cow at rest illustrates the inertia, the complacency and the smugness of the shameful-farce known as the Canadian dairy industry.
More to the point, anyone who, even for a moment, believes that a cow obviously lying down on the job represents the strengths of anything, particularly the Canadian dairy industry, is either dreaming in technicolour or smoking DFO press releases.
Thank you to the above anonymous poster for making it abundantly clear that I don't need to try again because I obviously "sank the battleship" the first time.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Very true but only a dairymen would understand that,certainly not an accountant!
The purpose of satire is to ridicule something in a way that makes;
(1) large numbers of people, in this case up to 33 million consumers, roar with laughter
(2) the completely-guilty few, in this case 12,000 owners of dairy quota, splutter with rage.
More to the point, the fact that dairy farmers are so completely out-of-touch with the rest of society that they see a cow at work rather than lying down on the job makes the satire just that much more appropriate and enjoyable.
Mission accomplished!
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
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