The Rural Voice, 2005-08, Page 1840 years of stability
Supply management marks 40 gears in the
poultry business. The stability it has brought
has allowed proper business planning, sag
Jim and Brenda McIntosh who lived through
the changes
Story ando
Jim and Brenda McIntosh, with their layer barn in the background, have seen
the changes supply management has brought for egg producers.
Two aerial photographs on the
wall of the office at Jim and
Brenda McIntosh's home near
Seaforth show the changes that have
taken place on the farm during their
time on the farm.
The top photo shows the old three-
storey laying hen barn attached to the
original bank barn with a cluster of
small brooder huts off to one side
where Jim's parents James and Vera
raised the chicks for the future
replacement poulets for the laying
14 THE RURAL VOICE
operation.
Today the McIntoshes still have a
laying hen operation and a poulet
growing operation but like all farms,
they're much larger. It's a growth that
has been made possible by the
stability that supply management has
brought to the poultry industry. This
year marks 40 years of supply
management in eggs.
Jim recalls the situation back in
the mid-1960s before supply
management came in. There had
been a lot of expansion in the
industry and there were a lot of hens
producing eggs the market didn't
need. Many of the biggest producers
were adamantly against the idea of
supply management.
But William Stewart, Ontario's
minister of agriculture, appointerd a
commission to do a study which
demonstrated the need for supply
management. Stewart had enough
clout within the Progressive
Conservative government of the day
that he was able to push supply
management through.
Later, Eugene Whelan, a strong
proponent of supply management as
federal ag ininister, helped the spread
of orderly marketing across the
country.
Once quota was allotted to the
current producers of eggs at the
beginning of supply management, the
marketing board began cutting quota
to eliminate the surplus production. If
the McIntoshes had not subsequently
purchased quota they'd have lost one-
third of their initial quota due to cuts,
Mcintosh says.
But with a marketing board
everyone, large producers and small,
shared the cuts, he says. He
remembers it took about two years to
stabilize prices. The establishment of
orderly marketing saved many
producers who were heavily in debt
to the feed company or the bank,
Mcintosh says. With the prospect of a
stable future, creditors were more
likely to give producers the
opportunity to work their way out off
their financial predicament.
And so today there are 1,200 egg
producers across Canada. Without
supply management, he says, under a
U.S.-style system, there would
probably be four large egg
production companies splitting up the
Canadian market. He points out that
one U.S. company owns more hens
than all the Canadian producers.
Despite depressed prices in the U.S.
right now, one huge company is
investing $55 million to expand.
In fact, with four nearby states
each of which have more hens than
all of Canada, there might be no egg
industry in Ontario at all, 'he
speculates. With no eggs being
produced here, there would be no egg
grading stations, no hatcheries, no
equipment supply companies and no
farm employees.