Only a week ago, I received some phone calls from some longtime dairy producers about an article that arrived in their e-mail from a well-respected dairy column that is written weekly by a noted source of up-to-date information about dairy cattle, management, and genetics. It was an article about the life of a very close neighbour, friend, and relative of mine that had recently passed away. As I read the article, I began to see why my dairy farming friends were quite upset with the article. There were enough un-truths in the article that I began to realize the article was at least partially written by A.I. and not enough research was done by the author to correct these “un-truths”. My neighbour was the third generation on his farm. He farmed hogs, dairy, cash crop, and after selling most of his farm after the children told him that they didn’t want to farm, he built a new house, grew sweet corn and vegetables to sell in town. He also did custom spraying for our farm and many others in our community. Every farmer that I have known in my 60+ years of farming has let his family make their own decisions on how they want to proceed in their life.
The story began to unravel when the author blamed Canada’s supply management system for the churches closing in rural communities, the newly constructed abattoir closing in the community, the price of milk quota rising from $12,000 to $56,000 in only a few years, and entire communities showing signs of collapse. Some of the dairy farmers who contacted me were around before Canada’s supply management system of marketing dairy, eggs, and chicken was developed. There used to be wild production swings that went from shortages that forced Canadian wholesalers and retailers to import those products, to surpluses so large that some foods had to be dumped at sea when neither buyers nor poor countries would take those products “free”.
In 1965 a young agriculture student from McGill working at the Shawville MAPAQ office told me Pontiac county had over 600 farms milking cows. Many of those farms milked seasonally and shipped cream in the summer, but dried the milk cows off in the fall when the pastures quit growing. About that time, milk pickup switched from being delivered in eight-gallon cans for milk and five gallon cans for cream, to milk being trucked in those large stainless steel tanker trucks and most cream was trucked a hundred miles away when the local butter factories closed. Many farmers thought they were too old to invest in a new milk house and bulk tank, even though there was a government grant to help farmers switch to bulk milk. At that time, many farmers switched from a mixed farm with a few beef, some milk cows, a few hogs, and a flock of hens for the wife’s spending money to only beef production. Even when there were hundreds of farms milking cows, it was a very small percentage of our county’s population who filled the dozens of churches in our county. Yes, now most churches have lots of empty seats, but a lot of parents and grandparents would prefer to watch the kids play hockey or ball or go to the shopping malls that attend church.
Yes, quota price has gone up. There used to be two milk quotas, one for fluid milk used for street milk (white, chocolate, and table cream) and another for industrial milk used for butter, cheeses, evaporated milk, yogurt, and skim milk powder. When some of the cream producers quit, some industrial quota was offered free to any farmer who wanted to produce it (at a lower price than fluid milk).
First, milk quota was in imperial measure before the metric system arrived. I was at the first milk quota sale in our county and bought some fluid milk quota for $1.35 per pound. Quebec milk quota price never rose to $56,000 per kilogram of fat. However, I was on the Quebec milk board when it was decided to freeze and maybe in the future lower the price of quota so a new, young producer could begin or expand. At that time we froze the quota price at $25,000 per kilo of fat. I also helped sell the low price cap on quota price in other provinces. Even though many older producers got most of their milk quota free, they wanted the quota price to escalate even higher so they could retire millionaires. We persuaded the majority of producers to cap the quota price at $25,000, so the next generation could continue or start to milk cows for a living.
I was also on the milk board when we introduced a start-up free quota for new or young producers wanting to take over the family farm. We also started a milk quota lottery where any new “wanna-be” milk producers could submit a plan to enter dairying. This was a chance to get 15 kilograms of quota for the best plan submitted. That new producer could bring their spouse in as a partner and the partner also received some quota. The new producer also got the first chance to buy more quota at the upcoming quota auctions.
Some other countries had some sort of quota system but their producers were persuaded to abandon the quota system. Countries like New Zealand and Australia, as well as the European Union moved away from the quota system and soon their countries were flooded with milk so cheap that farmers were going bankrupt, some died from suicide, and those left were having huge parades on the streets and highways, and asking for financial support.
While farmers were going broke, processors and chain stores were experiencing record profits and the consumer price of dairy products was higher than before when dairy farmers had a quota system. Although the American dairy farmers want a supply management system similar to what’s in Canada, their government seems to be lobbied by retailers who want very cheap milk and the U.S. government listens to billionaires.
Much of our food system is a free market system of selling. You may remember the huge escalation in egg prices in the U.S. while Canadian egg prices remained stable. Beef also works on a free market system. How do you like beef prices now? There is no accountability for gas prices. Fuel prices change hourly. Why?
It seems like the article that was written about my friend and neighbour was written by A.I. One of Canada’s best fiddlers had his reputation damaged by Google’s AI overview which said he was convicted of sexual assault, when it was actually another person with the same last name. Your car may soon be analyzed by A.I., and when you go into a hospital, you may be triaged with A.I.. I sure hope some restrictions are implemented very soon to stop A.I. being used as a weapon. And no, my article was not written by A.I..
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations.
