The Rural Voice, 1990-05, Page 22111
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COMPLETE LINE
OF ANIMAL FEED AND
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HOG — BROILER — LAYER
TURKEY — BEEF — DAIRY
VEAL — FISH — PET FOODS
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18 THE RURAL VOICE
CAN THE FAMILY
FARM COMPETE?
Adrian Vos, from Huron County, has
contributed to The Rural Voice since
its inception in 1975.
The farm community, including
myself, has consistently argued that
the family farm can compete success-
fully with the corporate farm. "Who
will sit up with the corporate sow?"
we said.
We assumed that, once corpora-
tions had taken over and had a monop-
oly, consumer prices would rise. Fur-
ther, we asserted that the family farm
is needed to maintain food sufficiency
for the country.
Developments in the U.S. have
shown that these arguments don't
necessarily hold water.
A prime example is the poultry
industry there. Corporations have out-
performed family farmers. Some 50
corporations produce all U.S. broiler
chickens, according to Gene Johnston
in Successful Farming, an American
magazine. Prices to consumers have
dropped significantly, to considerably
less than our family farms charge.
The reason should have been
obvious to us. When a corporation
invests in any enterprise it employs
the most modern methods — and the
most expensive, as Keith Roulston
wrote in his April column.
Or look at the American pork
industry. Now a U.S. hog farm with
600 sows is considered a small
operation. "Average" is from 600 to
900. More than 900 sows is "large."
The Ontario Farm Management
Report has shown the big difference in
return between the best one-third of all
kinds of farms and the lowest one-
third. Some family farms can and do
compete with the corporations. They,
like the corporations, make sure they
are in the top one-third. And top
managers, family or corporate, will sit
up with the sow. Corporations can
simply fire their staff if they do less.
The trend to larger farms is dis-
turbing. It pits consumers against the
defenders of rural Canada. Guess who
outnumbers whom.
We cannot discuss this trend with-
out the contentious issue of supply
management coming to mind.
All farms, whether under supply
management or not, are concentrated
in fewer hands than ever before. Fif-
teen year ago there were thousands of
egg producers in Ontario; only a little
more than 600 are left.
The same holds true for all supply -
managed farms. In some supply -
managed commodities the maximum
number of animals has been raised
after a hue and cry from commodity
group members. And the maximum
could be set higher, because there is
no law, which I know of, that limits
size. The members decide on maxi-
mum size and can at any annual
meeting raise the ceiling.
Farmers have never before suc-
ceeded in convincing the Consumers
Association of Canada of the priority
of family farming over cheap food.
They like the cake but they still prefer
to eat it at a low cost.
Can the trend be reversed? I don't
know. I doubt it. As long as execu-
tives of the Ontario milk board defend
high quota values as beneficial to the
dairy industry, and as long as the other
supply -management marketing boards
sit on their hands on quota value, I see
little hope. Established farms will
continue to buy quota and new ones
will largely be excluded because of
quota prices.
There is considerable goodwill
towards farmers in general. This,
however, is not guaranteed. Farmers
under supply management live in glass
houses. Without the consent of the
public, supply management will dis-
appear, and the only system that could
slow down the trend to large units will
be gone. In all farming, supply -man-
aged or not, the family farm as we
know it will become unrecognizable,
replaced by the corporation. Some-
thing like Cargill maybe?0