by SUSAN MANN
Nova Scotia will retain its dairy quota price cap after all.
At a special meeting on Aug. 2, Nova Scotia dairy producers voted 163 to two in favour of reaffirming support for the quota cap policy and to direct the board of Dairy Farmers of Nova Scotia to rescind its decision to remove the cap.
One farmer at the meeting abstained from voting, according to a notice on the Dairy Farmers of Ontario website.
The Nova Scotia board had passed a motion on June 27 to remove the policy, which is harmonized with four other Eastern Canadian provinces under a joint milk pooling agreement.
The board subsequently rescinded that decision after the special meeting.
Under the milk pooling agreement, the provinces – Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island – share revenue from fluid and industrial milk markets and work cooperatively on other matters of mutual interest.
The provinces have worked for years to harmonize their polices, including those involving quota, and introduced a harmonized price cap of $25,000 per kilogram in 2009.
Graham Lloyd, general counsel and communications director for DFO, says the Ontario dairy board believes “the cap is in the best interests of all producers as a whole and that the (Nova Scotia) decision confirms and reflects that.” BF
Comments
have to wonder how it ever got to a vote ? those 2 that voted for removal of the cap must have some special pull somewhere?
In Nova Scotia, as well as in Ontario, as evidenced by DFO's statement that caps are in the best interests of producers, conspicuously absent was any concern about the best interests of consumers, or even the rest of the farm community.
I mean, really, quota, by definition, isn't in the best interests of consumers in the first place, and it certainly isn't in the best interests of farmers who have to compete with the incomes and purchasing power available to only those who do have quota.
DFO, and the Dairy Farmers of Nova Scotia might just as well have told the world that not only are we the only farmers who matter, we're the only people who matter.
They're all greedy, self-centred, SOBs who deserve to lose everything, and the sooner, the better.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Start your own Political Party,run on a Anti-Supply Management platform.The huge membership of Practical Farmers will back you up, not to mention all the consumers that want cheap foreign dairy and chicken products...sure it might take every cent you have to get started up but l say GO for it!!
He could run as an independant but I am not sure he would be as entertaining as our current independant who runs on a divorced father rights platform . They would have that to compete over that one but Dennis would win in the humor department hands down .
That was the ultimate in cheap shots, and completely-inappropriate - Mr. Valenta has every right to run on whatever platform he chooses to run on. As a divorced father myself, I completely-understand his frustrations with a system which, by-and-large, treats non-custodial fathers quite-unfairly, but it just earns him the monkiker of "loser" from those who, many times more by good luck than by good management, haven't gone through that particular meat grinder.
It's exactly this sort of dismissive, demeaning, and seemingly-always anonymous, comment from farmers which underscores the structural divisiveness, and the quickness to be judgmental about others, that makes it so difficult for farmers, especially those who were "born with quota under their pillow", yet think their success was their own doing, to be taken seriously by others.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
The platform he runs on is one he believes in and good for him . I did not mean it as his platform is funny . Believe me I know all too well where he is coming from . Dennis himself is funny , not afraid to take a stand and be laughed at when others don't understand where he is coming from . I have talked to him one to one before and he has some good ideas , some not so good just like every one .
I don't own quota or drink milk so maybe you could take a pill and stop with your SM bashing of a non SM farmer . Not every one on here has to agree with you . If they all did you would not have any thing left to gripe and pout about .
AMEN
Did you just call a happy marriage good luck ?? l wouldn't exactly call in good management either!...your marriage attitude is corresponding very well with some of your other rediculous comments on here!
One of the truths about politics is that government will support something 100%, right up until the moment they don't.
This means that sometime, hopefully soon, government will stun supply management supporters, but nobody else, by saying that, in the best interests of consumers, in the interests of sound economics, for the best interests of fairness in the farm community, and in the interests of enhanced trade for the benefit of us all, that supply management, like the Berlin Wall, is coming down overnight.
Think about it, what else could they do? If they announced a phase-out, like they did with the Canadian Wheat Board, there would be countless delays and hand-wringing, and they've learned from that mistake that it's better to just make it happen - and they will, and hopefully with no quota buyout. They learned enough from the tobacco quota buyout fiasco to never do that again either.
Sound economics always eventually prevails - it's taken 35 years too long in the case of supply management, but it will happen, it always does.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
It still comes back to the old truth that many times gov will do or change some thing for all the wrong reasons even when trying to fix some thing .
Look at the GEA . You want to compare it to SM . It will make SM look good .
"producers of cereals, oilseeds, and cotton are effectively insulated from market prices while sugar and dairy have market price support programmes," said the WTO.
https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/09/29-3
Does it matter to the oil companies, does it matter to the electric company, does it matter to the government or it workers what is good for the consumers of Canada ? I think not. But that doesn,t matter in the eyes of a couple people just quash those farmers that has some control over their produce. So where is all the Greed bud.
Do you mean you want the SM bashers to do something positive?
I moved to NS from ON in 2006. While I had been buying 4 liters of milk in convenience stores in ON for about $3.00 and change, I had to pay $7.00 and change, and up to $8.00 for the same 4 liters in the spring of 2013. I visited ON in 2013 for a month, and the milk was still half the price in NS. Now, in OCT 2013, the milk fell in price almost overnight to $4.05 for 4 liters. Can't get an answer as to why.
Geez I would hate to have to buy a fresh made pizza there . Would likely be best to order it with out the cheese .
We made an ex large pizza last night at home and the cheese on it came to $1.93 and the pep. cost $3.00 so I must be buying my cheese at frozen pizza price - I bought it in the store. So tell me how much do the pizza joints pay for their cheese likely less than what we buy it in the stores. Pepperoni cost more then the cheese , where is it the cheese cost more than anything else. If people are going to take really cheap shots at people at the very least get their facts straight. We make all our pizzas and they have lots of cheese and the toppings and we do it for a lot less than you can every buy at a pizza joint and 100 times better. Next time buy the products and make your own and see what the costs are.
According to information published by the Dairy Farmers of Ontario, and as published in a recent article on this site, frozen pizza makers pay $7.54 per kilogram for mozzarella cheese, while fresh pizza makers are forced to pay 40% more (10.56/kg) and everyone else is forced to pay over 87% more ($14.12/kg).
And as for the component pricing structure of pizza, the pizza industry has long claimed mozzarella cheese is the most-expensive component of pizza, a claim which is supported by my daughter, a former pizza store manager who should know these things, (and who claims that the first thing any pizza store employee learns is "always measure the cheese", as well as by my next-door neighbour, a former owner of two pizza stores, and who should really know these things. In addition, the dairy industry has never denied, or even questioned, the component pricing structure of pizza.
More to the point, if cheese wasn't the biggest cost of pizza, why would the frozen pizza industry have demanded, and obtained, the price it enjoys, and why would the fresh pizza industry have lobbied for over a decade to obtain a pricing concession on cheese so as to be able to compete with frozen pizza makers?
It is, all at the same time, tragic, funny, and painfully-agonizing, to see the extent to which supply management supporters insist on going to ignore and/or deny the truth, any truth, all of the truth, about the extent to which supply management horribly penalizes consumers, especially when the truth comes from the dairy industry itself.
It's like this, unless DFO is lying, I have my facts straight, and therefore I'm not taking "cheap shots", but you, alas, are choosing to ignore the facts and shoot the messenger.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
I must have mistaken the price I paid for the cheese and peperoni , I should say not. We make 1 exlarge pizza and that is the price if the pizza joint can,t figure that much out , they should not be in selling them to long. Bought the ones the schools sell nothing but a box of crap. Must have to get my accountant to look at the price I paid for the toppings in the store maybe they can figure it out.
With a big family its great to buy the frozen mini-pizza doughs and then everyone can do their own thing.Pepperoni will always cost the most but not everyone likes it!
The Pizza joints will always whine about cheese eating into their profits.Some state that cheese makes up to 60% of their Pizza's while others say 35% is their normal.That's a big difference,its amazing at the end how they come out to almost exact same price of the pizza.
At least one local school raises funds by selling frozen pizza kits which come from, where else, Detroit - and, thereby, makes an end run around supply management completely, and also creates the delcious irony of imagining a kid from a dairy farm trying to flog these pizzas to raise money for his/her school.
The issue remains that cheese on fresh take-out pizza costs 40% more than it needs to cost, and cheese on home-made pizza costs over 87% more than it needs to cost, meaning that people making home-made pizzas value their time, and the heat for their ovens, at zero, and are also willing to get substantially hosed on the price of cheese - neither of which "tastes" very good to most of us.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
There well might be something more to the home amde pizza than just looking at the cost . You seem to well forget that it is likely for most a family event or family bonding that drives people to make their own . It may well be the taste and or dietary restrictions also .
Then add in the fact of the gas in the car to go and get it which does not happen to be free although ethanol has helped to keep the price lower .
As for the hydro cost to bake a pizza if they do it on off peak times it should be cheaper but then the kids are up later . Don't forget the fact that you can and should bring up at convention the cheap hydro rates and the increase we just got the first of this month AGAIN for hydro , the global adjustment rates that are killing consumers and industry that we are paying ( that when asked no one wants to explain ) along with selling hydro at a loss or even paying other provinces or states to take , paying hydro producers not to produce , all the while no one at OFA is lobbying the gov about .
An East Coast dairy filed a complaint against the PEI Milk Board about being frozen out from PEI because they were from out of province. They won against the government via AIT (Agreement for Internal Trade.
Since then, major rationalization has occurred. I don't know for sure, but this may have had something to do with it.
We hope for something similar to occur through AIT for chicken in Ontario, but only fluid milk is subject to AIT; all other Supply Management Mafia's are currently exempt.
Glenn Black
Small Flock Poultry Farmers of Canada
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