Skip to main content
what readers think

JONATHAN HAYWARD/The Canadian Press

Samuel de Champlain's dairy legacy

The Globe and Mail has recently published a number of articles unfavourable to the supply management of milk in the context of the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations.

I live in a small village in the beautiful region of Charlevoix. My neighbour is a dairy farmer and there are three other familial dairy farms in the village. They are our major economic drivers.

Not far from here, there is a herd of "vaches Canadiennes," the great-granddaughters of the few cows imported by Samuel de Champlain in 1608. Their milk is used for the production of one of the best cheeses in North America.

If the supply management of milk was cancelled, Canada would be flooded by industrially produced, heavily subsidized American products and all this would disappear. What would we have gained?

Yves Morin, Les Éboulements, Que.

Supply management is not the problem

Canada has a $100-million-plus dairy semen business founded on the current dairy industry. Loss of this industry, plus all the infrastructure that supports dairying in Canada will greatly reduce the wealth of rural Canada.

We need more imaginative programs that reduce the costliness of entry into dairying, but destruction of the supply management system will cause a great reduction in rural infrastructure in Canada. Do you really believe that the massive dairies in Australia, New Zealand, California and Florida are the right model for dairy production? These schemes use too much water for irrigation and are environmental disasters.

E.B. (Ted) Burnside, professor emeritus, University of Guelph

High prices keep small farmers in business

Relatively high prices for agricultural products are a good thing to my mind: They keep small farmers in the business. As wonderfully detailed in the classic Fast Food Nation, the relentless corporate push to cheaper food prices has meant that most people in the food industry work at minimum wage.

Christopher Ragan argues (An Opportunity For Canadian Dairy To Expand And Export – July 1) that we should remove supply-side management to reduce prices and move to a model more like New Zealand's. However, average herd size in New Zealand is more than 400 cows, whereas in Canada it is about 70. The Canadian dairy industry has done a good job at keeping the family farm a viable entity, which I think is a good thing.

Jay Malcolm, Toronto

The success of New Zealand's export model

I was interested to read Peter Clarke's opinion piece Supply Management Does Not Set The Price Of Food – Retailers Do (June 2).

It's a huge stretch to suggest that the New Zealand dairy model is ruinous when the industry has doubled in the past 20 years. Our farmers enjoyed record returns last year, and our industry continues to thrive.

Equally, the claim that our dairy co-operatives set production quotas similar to Canada's is simply not true. New Zealand farmers make production decisions in response to market signals – there are no limits.

Furthermore, describing New Zealand as globally dominant does not add up. We account for less than 3 per cent of world milk production. We are successful exporters due to our efficiency and focus on market demand.

Contrary to Mr. Clarke's view, dairy imports to New Zealand are not prevented by non-tariff barriers and the applied tariffs are zero. The New Zealand market is completely open to imports of dairy products – and they doubled between 2009 and 2014.

Despite prices tracking lower than we'd like, the New Zealand dairy industry remains optimistic about the future – global demand is set to accelerate over the next decade and we are ready to supply our customers. We encourage the Canadian industry to embrace these opportunities for growth alongside us.

Kimberly Crewther, executive director, Dairy Companies Association of New Zealand

Interact with The Globe