The Rural Voice, 1977-11, Page 11When is
a co-operative
not
a co-operative?
When times change, or the Ontario Milk Marketing
Board changes them
When a company has just completed a major expansion and
when it can sell all the product it can make, you'd expect the
• management to be bubbling enthusiastically about growth and
the glorious future.
But Don Martin sits in his panelled office at the Pine River
Cheese and Butter Co-operative at Pine River speaking in
cautious tones. "1 just wish", he says, "we could get back to
where we once were."
It's hard for him to talk enthusiastically about the future of his
factory when times are getting tougher all the time for small
cheese factories in Ontario. It isn't a case of not enough market,
hut in not being able to get enough milk to produce the cheese.
Ontario, once a major exporter of Canadian cheddar cheese is
now having to import the product from Quebec and elsewhere.
Where cheese once made up a healthy part of a Canadian export
surplus, it now makes up an unhealthy part of a Canadian trade
deficit.
And things are getting worse, Don thinks. Cheddar factories
are being urged now to put more of their production into
specialty cheeses such as Colby and Farmers cheese. "It looks as
if the cheddar cheese will go," he predicts, "then the specialty
cheese will go and all cheese production will stop."
Why then, expansion when the future looks go gloomy? Well,
Don says, he's young and he wants to stay in the business if
possible. The old plant was too old, making it hard to keep up the
necessary standards faced with four sets of government
inspectors visiting regularly.
Why should a company like Pine River in an area overflowing
with dairy herds face such a shortage of milk ;and thus a bleak
future? The answer is the Ontario Milk Marketing Board which.
Pine River Cheese and Butter Co-operative has recently undergone a major expansion. The Targe
building at the left in the picture has improved the cheese making set up.
THE RURAL VOICE/NOVEMBER 1977. PG. 11.