Jump to content

Dairy cartels


Recommended Posts

9 minutes ago, Moonbox said:

The quota is the problem.  It’s a defecto cinderblock tied to good farmers.  It stops progress.  It stops improvement and it artificially keeps prices higher than they need to be. 
 

Who does it help?  Not the average Canadian.  

No it doesn't, good farmers will make more. If they are getting 90 cents a litre for their milk, the farmer that can produce at 70 cents will make twice as much as the one who's cost is 80 cents and the one who's cost is $1 will go broke. Milk boards guarantee a price, not profitability.

You either pay the real cost of a commodity or you subsidize the crap out of it with your taxes whether you use it or not. Your choice.

Edited by Aristides
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It isn't the problem in this case. How the f*** do you go 30,000L over your quota? Are we gonna take the same stance if someone goes 200 tons over their salmon quota? If you have a quota you try to stay within it, sell off a few cows, buy a few more. Not run a couple hundred or a thousand more than you need.

They're there to maintain a steady price for the dairy farmers, and like fish, wheat and other quotas have been manipuated and speculated into selling quotas into massive conglomerates. It's the like TWO bread companies and TWO cheese companies shovelling in the money and hosing everyone in the country. How come I can buy two or three times the amount of CDN cheese at Costco, or imported cheeses subject to duties for less than CDN cheddar at regular stores? If every single corner store in the country didn't sell mo;k and bread you know damn well we would be gouged $7 a litre for milk and $5 a load for bread.

Loblaws, Sobeys, SaveOn are completely innocent and blameless, just like Exxon. Chevron and Shell are, eh?

You're all dreaming if you think any savings will be passed on to you - like all the the savings you got for self-serve gas, the 'savings' from ATMs that work 24/7, from the self-checkouts that put your kid out of work.

Edited by herbie
Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 minutes ago, Aristides said:

No it doesn't, good farmers will make more. If they are getting 90 cents a litre for their milk, the farmer that can produce at 70 cents will make twice as much as the one who's cost is 80 cents and the one who's cost is $1 will go broke. Milk boards guarantee a price, not profitability.

You either pay the real cost of a commodity or you subsidize the crap out of it with your taxes whether you use it or not. Your choice.

Or you can let the free market settle price and demand, and it will also determine who is going to survive or change industries... this guy is a milk farmer with a bone to pick, and that bone is his quota, this is not the first time this issue has come up, the Dairy cartel is normally good at shutting it all down, but here it is again...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Army Guy said:

Or you can let the free market settle price and demand, and it will also determine who is going to survive or change industries... this guy is a milk farmer with a bone to pick, and that bone is his quota, this is not the first time this issue has come up, the Dairy cartel is normally good at shutting it all down, but here it is again...

If this guy is producing 30K litres over his quota, that's no ones fault but his own. Either get more quota or don't over expand and expect the system to change just for him. $7 a litre is also bullshit.

Did you read my link?

In the US

Quote

Direct government payments in 2020 are forecast to be $37.2 billion, constituting 36.2 percent of net farm income, the highest level since 2001.

Is this where you want your taxes going or should we be paying the actual cost of what we consume?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Aristides said:

If this guy is producing 30K litres over his quota, that's no ones fault but his own. Either get more quota or don't over expand and expect the system to change just for him. $7 a litre is also bullshit.

Did you read my link?

In the US

Is this where you want your taxes going or should we be paying the actual cost of what we consume?

 

OK lets say the whole video and this guy is bullshit, he is not the only farmer that is unhappy about the government Quota system, sounds like a mafia thing pay for protection and price guarantees, and the consumers will pay what ever the costs to keep you in business.

Free market will balance it self off by those that can not afford to play will quit, those that can compete will...No quotas or tax payers funding...

Yes i read the link, not all of it translates to Canadian problems...but OK i see your point here.  

Right now i am paying inflated prices, so not sure if that is a win win. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A lot of farmers have issues with the quota system, it sure isn't perfect but what's the alternative. Say this guy and every other farmer dumps 30K more litres a month into the market, there isn't going to be an increase in consumption to justify it, the bottom will fall out of the price and the milk will get dumped anyway. Covid hit dairy farmers hard because one of their largest markets is restaurants which were all closed for the better part of a year resulting in an over supply even with quotas. They had to cut back production which resulted in less income even with a supported price. It would have been much worse in and un regulated market.

How do you know you are paying inflated prices?

 

https://www.thebullvine.com/news/could-supply-management-help-struggling-us-dairy-farmers/

'

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 2/1/2023 at 8:23 PM, Army Guy said:

Some frustrated farmers, voice their concerns about milk in todays market... It does not make sense, one of the few Mad MAX election promise to dismantle our dairy and cheese industry...the Farmers making only 90 cents per liter...out of a 7 dollar liter of milk...

 

 

Where is the common sense and logic for this to be going on in Canada today? All that milk dumping could instead go to some food banks or given away free to families in need. Canada does not need marketing boards of or any of the bureaucracy that goes along with it. Conservative Steven Harper many decades ago got rid of the Wheat Marketing Board, and the country did not collapse. All marketing boards need to collapse themselves. 

Without truckers and farmers, where would we be today? They are the real and true hard working people in Canada and the world and yet they get jumped and dumped on by our Marxist governments in Canada. We all need farmers and truckers. What we really need here in Canada today is less government and less politicians. They are the problem, and not the solution. 

It's the truckers and farmers that should be the millionaires here, and not politicians, where many of those politicians have made their millions from stealing from Canadians. End all marketing boards now. Works for me. ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, herbie said:

It isn't the problem in this case. How the f*** do you go 30,000L over your quota? Are we gonna take the same stance if someone goes 200 tons over their salmon quota? If you have a quota you try to stay within it, sell off a few cows, buy a few more. Not run a couple hundred or a thousand more than you need.

They're there to maintain a steady price for the dairy farmers, and like fish, wheat and other quotas have been manipuated and speculated into selling quotas into massive conglomerates.

The difference with fish is that quota is a percentage of an allowable catch - a quantity limited by run size, season and sometimes allocation/reallocation to other sectors or even countries in the case of trans-boundary species. Milk production is not limited by any of these and the limits are far more artificial than natural.  Of course anywhere there's hundreds of millions and billions of dollars at stake politics will be fierce especially where opportunity, quota's and above all else lobbying become so intertwined.

Now in the case of fish with all the sectors and variables at play there's no end to the amount of lobbying involved in settling who gets what.  When the players in the commercial fisheries involve everything from mom and pop operations to the Jimmy Pattison's and Galen Weston's of the world you can guess who's lobbyists will more effective.  I have no reason not to believe it's the same in the business of milk.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Aristides said:

No it doesn't, good farmers will make more. If they are getting 90 cents a litre for their milk, the farmer that can produce at 70 cents will make twice as much as the one who's cost is 80 cents and the one who's cost is $1 will go broke. Milk boards guarantee a price, not profitability.

Milk boards guarantee a price that makes sub-par operations profitable that otherwise wouldn't be, and guarantee much higher prices paid for consumers.  Those 80 and 90 cent per litre dairy farmers aren't competitive and if they had to compete in the open market like the rest of Canadians, they'd go out of business.  

In a normal world, we'd be left with competitive farmers doing everything they could to remain lean and keep prices low for consumers.  Instead, we're left with complacent cartels who are discouraged from that.  

This policy doesn't help Canadians.  It's a long-lived pander to ~13,000 dairy farms at the expense of 30-something million Canadians. 

Edited by Moonbox
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Aristides said:

A lot of farmers have issues with the quota system, it sure isn't perfect but what's the alternative. Say this guy and every other farmer dumps 30K more litres a month into the market, there isn't going to be an increase in consumption to justify it, the bottom will fall out of the price and the milk will get dumped anyway. Covid hit dairy farmers hard because one of their largest markets is restaurants which were all closed for the better part of a year resulting in an over supply even with quotas. They had to cut back production which resulted in less income even with a supported price. It would have been much worse in and un regulated market.

How do you know you are paying inflated prices?

 

https://www.thebullvine.com/news/could-supply-management-help-struggling-us-dairy-farmers/

'

So either way the government wins... do they pay the farmer for his quota if he does not make his numbers becasue of say covid...

Thats a good question why is milk products cheaper in the US, the prices are fixed by the board not by the free market. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not arguing whether this quota system is good or bad.

I'm making the same argument I always make that the people who are supposed to manage are useless f***s interested only in blaming something or someone else fpr their incompetence.
We talked decades ago about the Peter Principle, now we're living with the consequences. The top levels of everything are fully staffed with people who can't or just won't. Not just gov't bureaucracies, everywhere!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Moonbox said:

Milk boards guarantee a price that makes sub-par operations profitable that otherwise wouldn't be, and guarantee much higher prices paid for consumers.  Those 80 and 90 cent per litre dairy farmers aren't competitive and if they had to compete in the open market like the rest of Canadians, they'd go out of business.  

In a normal world, we'd be left with competitive farmers doing everything they could to remain lean and keep prices low for consumers.  Instead, we're left with complacent cartels who are discouraged from that.  

This policy doesn't help Canadians.  It's a long-lived pander to ~13,000 dairy farms at the expense of 30-something million Canadians. 

Bullshit, dairy farms are barely surviving and many aren't. It is the toughest job in farming and one the most expensive. Cows don't take days off and neither can dairy farmers unless they have help they can trust. 

Canadians always want something for nothing and will sell there souls and sovereignty to get it.

It’s no surprise our military is in such sad shape.

Edited by Aristides
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Aristides said:

Bullshit, dairy farms are barely surviving and many aren't. It is the toughest job in farming and one the most expensive. Cows don't take days off and neither can dairy farmers unless they have help they can trust. 

The average dairy farmer in Canada is worth something like $4.5M, so barely surviving is the tale the lobby has been telling us for decades, but is not rooted in reality.  We're top 10 for most expensive milk prices in the world, with other developed nations nearly 50% cheaper than us, but this is the only option for Canada...for reasons?  

10 hours ago, Aristides said:

Canadians always want something for nothing and will sell there souls and sovereignty to get it.

It's amazing that smaller countries like Australia and New Zealand can successfully dismantle their dairy cartels and still survive while offering cheaper milk to consumers, isn't it?  ?

 

Edited by Moonbox
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Moonbox said:

The average dairy farmer in Canada is worth something like $4.5M, so barely surviving is the tale the lobby has been telling us for decades, but is not rooted in reality.  We're top 10 for most expensive milk prices in the world, with other developed nations nearly 50% cheaper than us, but this is the only option for Canada...for reasons?  

4.5 million is peanuts, I'm surprised it is so low. 4.5 million would hardly buy you 40 acres of farmland in the Fraser valley, nowhere near enough to operate a profitable dairy farm. Then you have the cost of barns, silo's and other outbulidings, milking parlour, tractors, planters, harvesters, spreaders, irrigation system and all the other machinery required to operate it. And then you need cows and quota on top of that.

Other countries subsidize the crap out of their agriculture, Canada does not. I already posted a link to US subsidies in 2021, in the same year the EU subsidized agriculture to the tune of 54.4 billion Euros (79B CAD) We see what happens in places like France when government tries to take away any of their entitlements.

 

Quote

It's amazing that smaller countries like Australia and New Zealand can successfully dismantle their dairy cartels and still survive while offering cheaper milk to consumers, isn't it? 

Meat and dairy are New Zealand's largest export and by far their biggest customer for dairy is China. China is also the largest market by far for Australia's dairy exports with Japan second.

 

The leading producer and exporter of dairy (over 80%) from New Zealand is a co-op of over 10,000 farmers called Fonterra, if you wan to go on about cartels.

Edited by Aristides
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So the Canadian dairy industry is a 'cartel' as I understand it and quotas are used to keep prices stable. The US dairy industry is often referred to as 'free market' but with approximately 73% of US dairy farmer's revenues coming from government subsidies. Which may explain the cheaper milk prices.  So on one hand we have quotas and on the other....  subsidies. Which one's better? As far as I can recall we've never had any serious dairy shortages in this country. $5.79 for a 4L bag of milk doesn't sound excessive. I would prefer all this excess Canadian milk not being poured down the drain but being put to better use. Over all, is our system any better or worse than the US?

Edited by suds
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, suds said:

Over all, is our system any better or worse than the US?

Probably much the same when it comes to simply producing milk. Whatever other issues producers may have amongst themselves the public issue in both countries should be whether we're being gouged due to extraneous artificial causes like subsidies, quotas and above all these, lobbying. I can only imagine the lobbying involved where 73% of the dairy industry is floated on public funding and I suspect the US consumer/taxpayer is probably being gouged more deeply.

Lobbying is issue.  Dig into that as deep as physically as possible and see what happens. If we toughen up lobbying rules in Canada and make the process visible to the public hopefully American consumers will demand the same and follow suit.

Like I said earlier, I doubt there's a Canadian or human being alive that can't point to some aspect of their lives or business that is impacted by interests who lobbying public officials for their own benefit.  Well trust the outcomes to public officials at our peril.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm all for free markets and free trade with countries that are similar politically and economically with our own.  Then along comes the supply chain issues as a result of covid and the war in Ukraine. Maybe, just maybe, it's not such a bad idea to not put all our eggs in one basket. To become less dependent on others for our food, medical, vaccines, and energy supplies. In the past I was against the supply management system. Now I'm not so sure. If something works decently why mess with it?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It seems to be a staple in the country: an opaque bureaucratic system that makes its own obscure rules that seem to work somehow but cannot be touch for fear of utter catastrophe. Is it good? Sure it's guaranteed to work if there's no big changes in the environment, everything is frozen exactly as it was ages back. And if there is?

When you change and adapt you may not produce a perfect result every time, but you know how to improve what you have; and if you are at the top of your cycle, perfect as can be and came to abhor and avoid meaningful change at all cost - what could be your prospects? Let's see.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 hours ago, Aristides said:

4.5 million is peanuts, I'm surprised it is so low. 4.5 million would hardly buy you 40 acres of farmland in the Fraser valley, nowhere near enough to operate a profitable dairy farm.

4.5 million net worth (assets minus liabilities), meaning every single one of those dairy farmers could sell their farms and live well for the rest of their lives.  

22 hours ago, Aristides said:

Then you have the cost of barns, silo's and other outbulidings, milking parlour, tractors, planters, harvesters, spreaders, irrigation system and all the other machinery required to operate it. And then you need cows and quota on top of that.

No, because that's already part of the net worth calculation.  The farms themselves might be worth $10-20M, with large farmer-friendly agr. loan programs floating them. 

22 hours ago, Aristides said:

Other countries subsidize the crap out of their agriculture, Canada does not. I already posted a link to US subsidies in 2021, in the same year the EU subsidized agriculture to the tune of 54.4 billion Euros (79B CAD) We see what happens in places like France when government tries to take away any of their entitlements.

We're seeing it here when anyone mentions doing something about our dairy board.  We're already subsidizing the crap out of them with the quotas and the inflated prices, and that's for the privilege of having close to the most expensive milk in the world.  Yay.  

22 hours ago, Aristides said:

Meat and dairy are New Zealand's largest export and by far their biggest customer for dairy is China. China is also the largest market by far for Australia's dairy exports with Japan second.

Who cares? We could do that too.  BC is closer to China than New Zealand, but our dairy industry is de-incentivized from trying to compete on the export market in the first place.    

22 hours ago, Aristides said:

The leading producer and exporter of dairy (over 80%) from New Zealand is a co-op of over 10,000 farmers called Fonterra, if you wan to go on about cartels.

We can talk about Fonterra if you want, but the fact that they have their own near (though not complete) monopoly and STILL produce cheaper dairy for consumers while competing on the export market shows how dysfunctional Canada's board is by comparison.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

56 minutes ago, Moonbox said:

4.5 million net worth (assets minus liabilities), meaning every single one of those dairy farmers could sell their farms and live well for the rest of their lives.  

Sell their farm to who?

Quote

No, because that's already part of the net worth calculation.  The farms themselves might be worth $10-20M, with large farmer-friendly agr. loan programs floating them. 

How viable will they be with interest rates tripling and their other costs doubling. Who will buy a business with those fundamentals?

Quote

We're seeing it here when anyone mentions doing something about our dairy board.  We're already subsidizing the crap out of them with the quotas and the inflated prices, and that's for the privilege of having close to the most expensive milk in the world.  Yay.  

We aren't subsidizing them, we are paying the actual un subsidized cost of the commodity.

Quote

Who cares? We could do that too.  BC is closer to China than New Zealand, but our dairy industry is de-incentivized from trying to compete on the export market in the first place.    

So why aren't subsidized American farmers able to compete in those markets? Why aren't they shipping all their excess production to Asia?

 

Quote

We can talk about Fonterra if you want, but the fact that they have their own near (though not complete) monopoly and STILL produce cheaper dairy for consumers while competing on the export market shows how dysfunctional Canada's board is by comparison.  

Among other things, New Zealand has a much more benign climate. Dairy farming in a Canadian winter is not comparable. Why are no other countries competing in the New Zealand market?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Apparently Alberta does a few things a little differently than Ontario. When dairy farmers in Alberta exceed their quota, the excess milk is still allowed to be sold to processors but the revenue  is shared between all the dairy farmers in the province.  Hmmmm.... sounds like a better plan than dumping 30,000 litres down the drain. And then there's this.... in order to sell milk in Canada, a farmer must have a license to produce up to a set amount (quota). Initially given away free, these licenses have been bought and sold on the open market and have an estimated worth of $32 billion (2018 figures). If the supply management system is done away with, then someone is out $32 billion. Would the government make good with the farmers who paid a pile of cash for a license for the honour of producing milk in this country? I would hope so as it would be the fair thing to do. Comments?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

During the great depression, Americans witnessed the odd spectacle of bread lines while the government was paying farmers to set fire to their crops and slaughter their livestock. What led to this predicament was agricultural commodity prices being so low that farmers were forced to produce more just to pay their bills (which only exasperated the problem). When you read about this stuff today it sounds crazy, but that's how quickly things can get out of hand.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


  • Tell a friend

    Love Repolitics.com - Political Discussion Forums? Tell a friend!
  • Member Statistics

    • Total Members
      10,712
    • Most Online
      1,403

    Newest Member
    nyralucas
    Joined
  • Recent Achievements

    • Jeary earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Venandi went up a rank
      Apprentice
    • Gaétan earned a badge
      Very Popular
    • Dictatords earned a badge
      First Post
    • babetteteets earned a badge
      One Year In
  • Recently Browsing

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...