Dairy cartels

[eyeball]

1 hour ago, Aristides said:

You seem to think they are ripping you  off. I'd like to see you spend one day working on a dairy farm, getting up at five and not having dinner until 8 in the evening, 11 at night if you are  harvesting. 

Sounds like fishing. After about 24 hours you hit a wall but if you've been at it that long chances are good the boats going to be full in a couple more strings meaning now it's all downhill, you know the paycheck is going to be nice and before you know it your 2nd wind hits you like a gale.

[Moonbox]

58 minutes ago, Aristides said:

Competitive with who? You really don't think farmers do everything they can to remain profitable?  

History is littered with failed businesses and corporations who were "trying really hard" and doing everything they could to remain profitable.  The fact of the matter is there will be winners and losers...unless you centrally control the supply chain.  

58 minutes ago, Aristides said:

I posted an aerial photo of a So Cal dairy farm, it wasn't an isolated example. We used to spend several months every winter in a place called Hemet CA. There are more than a half dozen farms just like it on the north side of the city and when the wind is out of the north you can smell them on the south side. If you don't believe me go  to Google Earth and look. Cows would never survive one of our winters in conditions like that.

Cool, and then we can still go back to New Zealand and show you an example of a subsidy-free industry doing much better than it had before they dismantled their supply management.  Before you go talking about their wonderful temperate weather again, rewind and read the previous sentence again.  

58 minutes ago, Aristides said:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/21/small-farms-vanish-every-day-in-americas-dairyland-there-aint-no-future-in-dairy

Interesting article, but the number of dairy farms going down isn't particularly relevant if the amount of milk being produced goes up.  

58 minutes ago, Aristides said:

What do you think has changed since then, they got more subsidies? This has been going on for decades.

Yes, fewer, bigger farms, operating at economies of scale, driving costs down and outputs up.    

58 minutes ago, Aristides said:

That's my biggest beef with your lot, you compare a subsidized price with one that isn't and claim they are the same.

Nice pun.  ?

Forgive me, but I'm too much of an economics guy to give any credit to the idea that small-scale dairy farms in Quebec (or anywhere for that matter) are efficiently competing.  Setting dairy prices by the lowest common denominator doesn't help anyone but them.  

58 minutes ago, Aristides said:

You seem to think they are ripping you  off. I'd like to see you spend one day working on a dairy farm, getting up at five and not having dinner until 8 in the evening, 11 at night if you are  harvesting. 

I don't think dairy farmers are ripping us off intentionally.  I'm sure they work hard.  What I do think rips us off is a soviet-style centrally controlled system that artificially keeps non-competitive farmers in business when they otherwise wouldn't survive, especially when they're averaging out as net millionaires.  There are people a lot worse off getting far less help from our government.   

This idea that the ma & pa dairy farm is a sacred cow that must be protected at all costs doesn't ring true to me, but I'm only focusing on dairy because that's what this topic is about.  I'm no libertarian or absolute free-marketeer, but I'm always against keeping non-viable businesses alive on the public dime.  We can switch the subject to Bombardier if you like.  ?

 

[Aristides]

Huge factory farms put very little into their local economies  because they can outsource their suppliers just like you want to do with their product. Basically you want to outsource everything to the cheapest  bidder wherever it comes from and then complain that we don't do anything ourselves anymore, just like we have everything else. Make it in China, buy it on Amazon or E Bay, as long as it is cheap. 

A business is viable only as long as you give it conditions where it can survive. 

We outsource our security to the US, why not our food as well. Hey, the Yanks are dumb enough to subsidize it for us with their taxes. Right?

[Moonbox]

18 minutes ago, Aristides said:

Huge factory farms put very little into their local economies  because they can outsource their suppliers just like you want to do with their product.

Small farms in Quebec do nothing to support my local economy here in Ontario.  

18 minutes ago, Aristides said:

Basically you want to outsource everything to the cheapest  bidder wherever it comes from and then complain that we don't do anything ourselves anymore, just like we have everything else. Make it in China, buy it on Amazon or E Bay, as long as it is cheap. 

When was the last pair of shoes you bought from your local cobbler, or your last hand-stitched pair of pants?  Was your truck made by a nearby artisan?  It's 2023.  

18 minutes ago, Aristides said:

A business is viable only as long as you give it conditions where it can survive. 

but the conditions where it can survive are sometimes/often not worth engineering.  

18 minutes ago, Aristides said:

We outsource our security to the US, why not our food as well. Hey, the Yanks are dumb enough to subsidize it for us with their taxes. Right?

It's a better system than ours, where poor people aren't paying the brunt of the cost to maintain the (average) $5M net worth of our daily farmers.  At least they're still incentivized to properly compete with one another, and on the open market. 

Canadian consumers pay more for dairy products. A gallon of milk that on average sells for $2.90 in the U.S. would cost approximately 50% more in Canada. Cheese, butter and yogurt are also more expensive. If Canadians could buy dairy and poultry products from the United States without high tariffs, the average household would save $438 per year, according to the Montreal Economic Institute. Canada’s dairy supply management system especially hurts low-income families, the institute says.

https://www.thebullvine.com/news/u-s-mexico-canada-are-worlds-apart-for-dairy-farmers-here-are-the-major-differences-and-how-the-dairy-industry-works-in-each-country/ 

From the bullvine, 2019.  I thought you'd like that ?.

[eyeball]

2 hours ago, Aristides said:

A business is viable only as long as you give it conditions where it can survive.

So is a community or society of communities.

We tried to resist quotas being imposed on us by Ottawa.  Part of the resistance was a call for area-based management, fisheries managed in BC instead of Ottawa.  There was a time when small communities up and down the coast valued having a small fleet of family owned and operated fishing boats within their socio-economic fabric  The trick was getting the whole country to buy into this but globalization was heading in the opposite direction and taking the country with it.

The book Jihad vs McWorld captures what's been happening.  Atlantic Magazine ran an article on what we're up against.  The process started decades ago and there's little we can do to change things now.

Quote

 

Jihad vs. McWorld

The two axial principles of our age—tribalism and globalism—clash at every point except one: they may both be threatening to democracy

By Benjamin R. Barber

MARCH 1992 ISSUE

Just beyond the horizon of current events lie two possible political futures—both bleak, neither democratic. The first is a retribalization of large swaths of humankind by war and bloodshed: a threatened Lebanonization of national states in which culture is pitted against culture, people against people, tribe against tribe—a Jihad in the name of a hundred narrowly conceived faiths against every kind of interdependence, every kind of artificial social cooperation and civic mutuality. The second is being borne in on us by the onrush of economic and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize the world with fast music, fast computers, and fast food—with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald's, pressing nations into one commercially homogenous global network: one McWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications, and commerce. The planet is falling precipitantly apart AND coming reluctantly together at the very same moment.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1992/03/jihad-vs-mcworld/303882/

 

I'm more inclined to think like an Earthling these days and human interests are what we need to develop and focus on. I think the two axial principles now are the governed and government.  I care less and less about borders and national interests and take the view that governments and corporations use them as convenient shells under which money can be moved and squirreled away and where we are gamed, played against one another and...milked for all we're worth. 

Edited February 8, 2023 by eyeball

[suds]

19 hours ago, eyeball said:

Each cow over it's life span can produce this much in value plus the costs of production and a profit for the farmer? It's hard to believe.

Do you have to be an owner-operator to own quota? If no, and the industry is supporting a bunch of armchair farmers who are getting richer at the expense of producers and consumers alike then I take no sympathy whatsoever for anyone involved and I only care about myself and getting the cheapest milk possible.

BTW $10 says the hardest lobbying group in the herd are the armchair farmers.

 

 

 

This is the way I understand it (and if anyone else knows better, please jump right in). The 'quota' is just a license to produce a certain amount of milk. If a farmer calculates he needs a 100 head to meet his quota he purchases a 100 head. Or...  purchase 200 head and dump a lot of milk. It's up to him.  The $30,000 per cow estimation is solely based on what an average cow produces and the cost of a quota at any given time. As I've already stated, the rules for buying and selling quotas are different depending on the province. I would imagine that if one had a few million to blow there would be better investments than buying a quota and not having any cattle. It would also likely be frowned upon by the powers that be. As far as I know a quota is good until it's sold to someone else or passed on to a family member.

 

[suds]

44 minutes ago, eyeball said:

So is a community or society of communities.

We tried to resist quotas being imposed on us by Ottawa.  Part of the resistance was a call for area-based management, fisheries managed in BC instead of Ottawa.  There was a time when small communities up and down the coast valued having a small fleet of family owned and operated fishing boats within their socio-economic fabric  The trick was getting the whole country to buy into this but globalization was heading in the opposite direction and taking the country with it.

The book Jihad vs McWorld captures what's been happening.  Atlantic Magazine ran an article on what we're up against.  The process started decades ago and there's little we can do to change things now.

I'm more inclined to think like an Earthling these days and human interests are what we need to develop and focus on. I think the two axial principles now are the governed and government.  I care less and less about borders and national interests and take the view that governments and corporations use them as convenient shells under which money can be moved and squirreled away and where we are gamed, played against one another and...milked for all we're worth. 

So basically you would prefer 'area based management' when it comes to BC and our federal government, but not when it comes to borders and 'national interests' on the global scale?

[eyeball]

23 minutes ago, suds said:

So basically you would prefer 'area based management' when it comes to BC and our federal government, but not when it comes to borders and 'national interests' on the global scale?

I have mixed feelings. On the one hand area or regional based management would reflect and represent local coastal values better than Ottawa can from over 3000 miles away. There are other things we would have tried, ideas derived locally that Ottawa just wasn't willing too entertain.

On the other hand we also live on a planet where little happens in isolation anymore and where everything is increasingly connected.

If the day ever comes where there is one big government, fostering area based management or bioregionalism will be the only way it could do it's job - looking after the bigger picture and leaving the details to the locals.

Edited February 8, 2023 by eyeball

[Aristides]

5 hours ago, Moonbox said:

Small farms in Quebec do nothing to support my local economy here in Ontario.  

Ontario farms sure do. Dairy is the largest segment of Ontario agriculture making up 20% of receipts.

Quote

When was the last pair of shoes you bought from your local cobbler, or your last hand-stitched pair of pants?  Was your truck made by a nearby artisan?  It's 2023. 

We used to make all that stuff. I have lots of things like cookware, tools  , and other stuff made in Canada that I bought in the 60's  70's and 80's. Ontario used to have a large garment and shoe making industry.

"but the conditions where it can survive are sometimes/often not worth engineering."

Whether you regulate supply to match demand or subsidize the cost, it is still engineering. 

Quote

It's a better system than ours, where poor people aren't paying the brunt of the cost to maintain the (average) $5M net worth of our daily farmers.  At least they're still incentivized to properly compete with one another, and on the open market. 

Quote

 

So you think a system where farmers can produce as much as they want and and have government subsidize the crap out it to keep prices down and still dumping surplus that has no marked is better.

Quote

Canadian consumers pay more for dairy products. A gallon of milk that on average sells for $2.90 in the U.S. would cost approximately 50% more in Canada. Cheese, butter and yogurt are also more expensive. If Canadians could buy dairy and poultry products from the United States without high tariffs, the average household would save $438 per year, according to the Montreal Economic Institute. Canada’s dairy supply management system especially hurts low-income families, the institute says.

Again, you compare a subsidized price with one that isn't. 

Quote

 

https://www.thebullvine.com/news/u-s-mexico-canada-are-worlds-apart-for-dairy-farmers-here-are-the-major-differences-and-how-the-dairy-industry-works-in-each-country/ 

From the bullvine, 2019.  I thought you'd like that ?.

 

Yup. pretty much says we have a better system, even with its flaws.

Edited February 8, 2023 by Aristides

[Moonbox]

1 hour ago, Aristides said:

Ontario farms sure do. Dairy is the largest segment of Ontario agriculture making up 20% of receipts.

Maybe, but then 50% of Canada's dairy farms are in Quebec, so that's what we're mostly subsidizing.  It's even worse for most other provinces.  

1 hour ago, Aristides said:

Whether you regulate supply to match demand or subsidize the cost, it is still engineering. 

I don't want either system, but the latter is better than the former.  One provides incentive for competition, the other doesn't.  One pushes the majority of the cost on poor consumers, the other doesn't.  

The dairy industry won't disappear if we get rid of supply chain management.  The market for milk won't disappear as a result, and nobody is saying we fill demand with American producers instead.  

1 hour ago, Aristides said:

Yup. pretty much says we have a better system, even with its flaws.

Only if you're a smaller-scale dairy farmer, and nobody was arguing that they're not better off with the current system. ? Everyone else?  Not so.