by JIM ALGIE
While dairy farm numbers continue to decline, Canadian milk production has risen in recent years along with processing activity and revenue and the economic impact of the country’s supply-managed dairy industry, a new Dairy Farmers of Canada website says.
Government tax receipts and processing industry revenue are among leading beneficiaries of an industry that contributed $18.9 billion in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 215,000 jobs to the Canadian economy in 2013 and $3.6 billion to government coffers, the site says.
“We contribute in a huge way to the economy especially in rural communities across the country,” DFC President Wally Smith said in an interview, Friday. “In many places, we are like the cornerstone of the economy . . . and it filters down into the community, into your hardware stores, into your school programs, into the social fabric,” Smith said.
Text on the website’s home page coins a phrase, “the milkledown effect,” describing it as “a made-up term for something very real.” With graphics and text, the site argues “the benefits of Canadian dairy farming to local communities in all kinds of ways.” It also features video interviews with dairy farmers in Nova Scotia, Camrose, Alberta and London, Ont.
The Ottawa-based dairy farmers’ group “softly launched” its campaign the week of May 18 with radio advertisements, a DFC statement says. On Thursday, the agency announced details of the campaign which is expected to continue through June and July with television, print and digital media activity as well as public relations events highlighting regional dairy spinoffs.
The website relies on data from a recently-published Dairy Farmers of Canada-commissioned study, The Economic Impact of the Canadian Dairy Industry in 2013. It’s also part of a growing lobbying effort by agricultural interests focussed on current, international trade talks about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Talks among 12 participating TPP countries appear to be nearing a conclusion. A bill to provide U.S. President Barack Obama fast track authority to sign a deal passed the American Senate recently and is to be considered soon by the House of Representatives. Terms of the agreement have yet to be disclosed although U.S. trade officials have spoken publicly about their effort to gain access to Canada for American goods now restricted by supply management.
Smith, who farms on southern Vancouver Island near Chemainus, plays down the “end game” talk about TPP, citing a recently-cancelled meeting of trade ministers that had been scheduled for Guam. He also expressed strong criticism of U.S. bargaining positions that have put Canada’s supply-managed sector “under a great deal of pressure.”
“What is really unfair about all this is that the United States doesn’t discuss in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations anything about domestic support,” Smith said. “So domestic support remains untouched and they want all other countries to unilaterally disarm,” he said. “Is the TPP a benefit to all countries that are participating or it is showing favouritism to the U.S.?” Smith said.
Dairy Farmers of Canada launched its “milkledown effect” campaign, Thursday, a day after the Canadian Pork Council published a study on the importance to Canadian hog farmers of new export access to TPP countries, notably the United States and Japan.
Also this week, an alliance of producers of Canada’s supply-managed commodities issued a statement of support for Canadian government efforts at TPP to “defend the Canadian dairy, poultry and egg farmers’ interests.” As well, the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association is a member of the Five Nations Beef Alliance – including the Cattle Council of Australia and cattle farming groups in the United States, Mexico and New Zealand – which has actively campaigned for liberalized trade through TPP.
Dairy Farmers of Canada’s 2013 economic impact report, dated Mar. 31 and released publicly in early May, is the third in a series of similar studies conducted in 2009 and 2011 by Quebec-based consulting firm ÉcoResources. The 2013 analysis describes dairy as “one of the largest food industries in Canada” and “a mainstay of the economy” built on $5.9 million in milk and cream sales by 12,234 farms in all regions.
Dairy sales represented 11 per cent of total farm cash receipts in 2013. The shipments of Canada’s 465 processors represented 17 per cent of the sales volume of Canadian food and beverage sector, 2.5 per cent of all Canadian manufacturing, the report said.
The number of individual farms declined about 7.9 per cent between 2009 and 2013 and employment dropped about four per cent to 22,700. Even so, the number of processing plants grew by three percent with Ontario showing the largest increase.
As well, milk production rose between 2009 and 2013 by about two per cent to 78.2 million hectolitres, the report said, citing advances in feed, disease prevention and genetics. Those trends have continued since 2013, Smith said, citing rising trends in butter and cheese consumption.
“We have certainly been growing the market here domestically, probably in an unprecedented way in the last little while,” Smith said. The DFC president said he expects the Canadian government will maintain what he described as a “balanced trading position” in support of supply management as TPP talks continue.
The ÉcoResources report shows milk processing activity concentrated mainly in Quebec and Ontario, reflecting the concentration of dairy farmers in those provinces. Ontario and Quebec host 69 per cent of milk plants and 82 per cent of Canadian dairy farms.
In all, dairy production, processing and sales accounted for 214,845 jobs in Canada, a contribution to GDP of $18.9 billion and $3.6 billion in tax revenue to three levels of government. Data for Ontario shows 37.4 per cent of the job total at 80,338 and 39.9 per cent of the national GDP contribution at $7.5 billion.
In Ontario alone, dairy production accounted for a total tax contribution in 2013 of $480 million, $200.2 million to the federal government, $230 million to the province and $77.2 million to municipalities, the report says. Dairy processing in Ontario during 2013 accounted for $923 million in government tax revenue. BF
Comments
Insofar as supply management, or any tariff-based system, is net-negative, by definition, for both jobs and economic activity, touting the jobs created and economic contribution by supply management is misleading.
The truth is that in the absence of supply management, more jobs and more economic activity would be created in the dairy sector than there is now.
I can't understand how, or why, anyone in supply management could, with a straight face, expect anyone with an IQ bigger than their shoe size to believe this nonsense coming from DFC
"Oh what a tangled web supply management weaves, when first it practices to deceive"
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
I often see free advertising of belhalf of the dairy industry in the Globe and Mail and the National Post.
oh wait...........lol
Raube Beuerman
The fact that there are mortality dumpsters in front of most pork operations comprising effective bill boards without ontario pork decals is also laughable. I can not believe that the first sight my child on the school bus has to witness from a raised position when he passes a pork operation is such. Shame on my tax dollars being entrusted to growing forward 2.
Most of the hog farmers in my area have placed there dumpsters down the road at the line fence. Usually in front of there neighbors house.
Editor: Comment will be published if resubmitted and signed.
If one wants to slide immediately down the slippery slope, as the above anonymous poster seems willing to do, it would be quite easy to go one step further and ask about/make cheap shots about the "disposal" process involving un-wanted Jersey bull calves.
Lots of things in agriculture aren't pretty, but the ugliest are those premised on double-standards
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Maybe you would like to comment on the dispossal of runt pigs in a litter .
All things ugly in agriculture are not related to SM only . Get a life !
I have a wonderful life - I've survived a type of cancer which I'm told has almost no chance of returning. In addition, I get to point out the inconsistencies and double standards farmers use to take advantage of other farmers, and in the process I drive one group apoplectic and the other group into gales of laughter.
The group my comments and criticisms drive into gales of laughter tell me my comments and criticisms are the only worthwhile part of this site and, if anything, my comments and criticisms, especially about supply management, don't go nearly far enough.
It's not my fault that supply management is the biggest, baddest and longest-running double-standard we have in agriculture - and that's why:
(1) it's the most-deserving target.
(2) its supporters have the thinnest skins in the farm community
(3) I do it
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Editor: Comment will be published if resubmitted and signed.
While my comment had a smart-a$$ tone, the fact of the matter remains that if the supply managed sectors could stand on their own merits,(there are none) there would be no need to campaign with the 'milkle down effect', which is quite a stretch to say the least.
This anonymous reply borders on more of a rant than anything, unable to deal with any critique of their tariff system.
When mainstream newspapers start to run numerous articles on how the pork or beef industries are propped up, he/she may have a point. Until then......cry me a river.
Raube Beuerman
I wonder how many pork operations have been propped up by supply managed operations?Some of the more successful operations certainly have collateral ties. Mabey the vote count that Mr. Thompson quotes could possibly answer the question.
A very-good (non-voting) friend of mine was at the 2013 Ontario Pork annual general meeting - idle speculation, even at that time, was that at least some of the 13 votes cast in opposition to the motion to "urge government to place trade ahead of protectionism" were from delegates who also owned quota.
However, this was, and still is, speculation because it was, as so it should be, a secret ballot.
In any event, regardless of the reasoning behind the 13 nay votes, any time there's that much of a majority, and especially for an issue like this, it indicates, without doubt, that there is very little, if any, support for supply management in the non quota owning segment of the farm community - and that's the point that matters as well as the point supply management supporters ignore at their own considerable peril.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
So it was , is and every time you have printed it here , has been nothing more than hearsay . That is not what you have been touting it as !
The 68 - 13 vote to "urge government to place trade ahead of protectionism" wasn't hearsay, it was fact even though supply management supporters are still hoping it was a bad dream - it wasn't.
The only hearsay was about who might have voted against the motion and/or to what extent any nay vote may have been influenced by quota owned by that particular delegate or delegates.
The extent to which supply management supporters will go in ever-desperate attempts to twist and/or deny reality, or even the written word, is simply amazing/horrifying/tragic as is, once again, amply demonstrated by the above dutifully-anonymous poster.
And then the authors of the nit-picking semantics still can't understand why supply management is not well-liked and will not be missed.
Sigh!
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Would you expect pork producers to vote to put protecting domestic markets ahead of trade?
supply management or simple minded, this does boggle the mind
Post new comment