The Rural Voice, 1989-07, Page 9FEEDBACK
policy in place made by former agri-
culture minister John Wise, which you
said would not be changed.
The election is over and you have
started to break your commitments. I
truly do not believe that you under-
stand how supply management and
orderly marketing works. Supply
management has three ingredients:
1. Producers have quotas assigned
to them to fill domestic requirements
for industrial milk plus a small 2.2 per
cent for export purposes.
2. The government uses a cost of
production formula properly indexed
to insure that efficient producers re-
ceive adequate and stable returns; 35
per cent of dairy farmers are consid-
ered efficient under the system now.
3. The government has border
controls to prevent the dumping of
subsidized dairy products from other
countries, which is allowable under
Article 11 of GATT.
Without any of these three items
we do not have effective supply
management.
The government decided in April
to cap industrial milk prices for 20
months; in essence, item number two
under supply management has been
put on hold for 20 months. Also,
because the formula has not been
properly indexed since February of
1988, we as dairy farmers will be
accepting a price freeze for 32 months.
No other person or industry in Canada
would accept these conditions.
I would like to know from you
why the government has made these
changes in dairy policy. We are not a
problem on the world market, we
provide a quality product at a fair and
equitable price. We have our house in
order and would like you to do the
same with yours. My eldest son
recently started farming with me and
would like to carry on the tradition of
the family farm.
I believe the government has a hid-
den agenda for marketing boards and
that this is a start of a 10 -year program
to dismantle our system. Farmers are
starting to wake up and take note. We
fought hard to get this system and will
fight harder to keep it!O
Ron Visser
Chairman, Dairy Committee
National Farmers Union
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JULY 1989 7