by SUSAN MANN
The committee responsible for overseeing Canada’s milk marketing plan is reinstating the automatic adjustments of national provincial quotas used to target production of industrial milk.
John Core, CEO of the Canadian Dairy Commission, says the Canadian Milk Supply Management Committee decided Wednesday to begin using the automatic adjustment process for market sharing quota (the quota for industrial milk nationally that each province is allocated a share) again starting Aug. 1. The process uses a formula applied bi-monthly to measure stocks and Canadian requirements to indicate if there should be increases or decreases in the industrial milk quotas issued to provinces.
The Committee had suspended the process to help reduce a large surplus of butter stocks. Industrial milk is used to make products like cheese and yogurt.
“We essentially froze the quota for six months that allowed us to absorb the surplus butterfat into the domestic system,” Core explains, noting the approach took about 800 tonnes of butter out of the system. “That allowed the butterfat that was in stocks to move into normal levels.”
Market improvement has also helped reduce the surplus as has increased cream sales, which have reduced the amount of skimoff from fluid, he adds.
The Committee has also extended the Domestic Dairy Product Innovation program for one year. The current program was slated to end July 31. The long-running program, intended to boost overall milk demand, issues milk to processors to launch products to tap new markets.
Core says the Committee agreed to share the quota allocated to the program nationally. Previously the program only had projects in which processors obtained milk from producers in their province. Alberta representatives had objected to the restriction, arguing that the program should be fully national and the allocated quota shared nationally. BF
It seems like
Anyone from a non-farm background would easily wonder if there aren't more people on various Boards, Tribunals, Committees, consulting contracts, administrative teams, lobbying efforts, and other projects, devoted solely to making sure supply management doesn't collapse under the ever-increasing weight of sheer inefficiency, than there are people actually milking the cows.
It would seem that supply management, in a way remarkably similar to that seen in Soviet-era Russia, is more about full employment for all the lackeys supply management needs to make it function, than about any benefit to the consumer. But then, only in the fairy-tale world of supply management would anyone have the nerve to claim that 200% tariff barriers are of benefit to the consumer.
Someday, just like the collapse of the Berlin Wall, 20 years ago, the bad dream of supply management will just end, and not a moment too soon.