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The Wingham Advance-Times, 1974-10-03, Page 15Crossroads the weekly Mows hi your Liolowol Bsnser. Whigkam Advance* Times au Mount Forest Cosh - * rote to reed by 7,830. people in the "hearthq* of 111114wootern Ontario. 144ased rio. sed .1,8 readers lar each of 8400 motes.) e P1 lishe every . in The � stowel; r, The WingIa Acclvanco.Timos and The Meir Forest Confederate hY Wenger Bros. iisnitect SOME FARMERS blame big ers, by scattering their buildings, small producers. Mrs. Ross -says systems: one for farmers who labor investors from metropolitan producers come out for the egg surplus. Others feel that of the situation in a better when areas It comes to quotas on the farm with their wives and children, who don't have to make a living solelif there big produc- than the different One for a farm. position two and from Millions of eggs are rotten, which in the end it had to 'destroy. Officials are .exchanging caustic Mrs. Plumptre claimedthat remarks. Egg producers are CEMA was doing'a bad job and' complaining about the ever, in, the consumers were getting hurt, creasing levy. And. everyone is Mr. Whelan reef rted that she talking about the national egg, didn't know what she was talking scandal.about. But should the federal agricul. To all this, Norman Treleaven, turn minister, Eugene Whelan _ owner of- Mount Forest Produce, and.chairman of the Food Paces shrugged his shoulders. "It is all Review Board, Beryl Plumptre,' lright to haveproduction control," ever. visit egg producers. <And . ,.lie remarked, "but the situation rs ridiculous." Listowel and Wingham, it is "Theob graders around Mount Forest,1_ las become gem," said Sinclair likely Mrs. Plumptre would be Ross of Rothsay, who has been in booed and Whelan applauded. the egg business since be was 14, Mrs. Plumptre would be booed : "is too many eggs , all over because she is blamed for giving,. ; Canada and the price of an egg is bad publicity, not only to the . too low." Canadian Egg.Marketing Agency- "I would like to know where all (CEMA), but also to the egg ;'the eggs are coming from," said producers. 'b'red Benham, RR 1, Dundalk, Whelan would be applauded*,, and in egg production for 33 mainly because he has defended ,;years. "I am producing fewer CEMA, which egg producers and eggs now than in the past." graders in the area, by and large, "Let me tell you something,"' feel is trying to do a good job, but one farmer stated, "and don't also because they feel he's tilos you dare put my name in that .. . mately the man who will do what japer The problem is big pro - they want: help, them stay to . Rducers. They are the ones who business. true creating a Surplus." Of course, these are views ex- 1 A surplus? - pressed by a small sample of s "I can sell all. the eggs I can area egg producers and graders, get," said George Leith, owner of but while all farmersdo not al- Listewel Prod.�_.,ce, Listowel, "and ways agree, they belong to the "pot a single customer has told me same breed of men and women the price o •eggs is high. It's the who live under the shadow of the chealiest thing they can buy." unpredictable, nature. lie has a farm with 20,000 hens The egg scandal hit the head *`on which we depend", but is a lines when CEMA.announced that ;grader for producers from as far it was destroying 15 million eggs as "the lake", and has been in because they were rotten. While the egg business since 1937. e the clamour was still in. the air, spoke with authority, duo ' g CEMA slcnounced thi t an addlk,,,figtiret with ease. tianal 44 iuill;on fgga Wore c 'Reach+ to any que-Stroir on spoiled. the egg situation vary. Some Destroying millions of eggs people are caustic, some are sure was the scandal. Some people, who 'is wrong and who is right. particularly editorialists and But all -are puzzled. There are cartoonists, saw something im- some. things that are definite, moral about it when millions of though. people in the world are starving. The Canadian Egg Marketing But the egg problem was there Agency came into being through before the scandal, which gave the controversial Farm Products • birth to CEMA to ensure that Marketing Agencies Act. The producers got the price they were theory behind the formation of asking. CEMA fixed the price of the agency was that the price of eggs for • producers, charged eggs, per dozen,r.would be set by them a levy, gave them quotas decree rather than by supply and and bought the surplus eggs demand. That would give the producers the prices they want- ed. "They should let supply •and demand take care of it," Mr. Treleavan said. "Supply and demand is con- trolling the situation now," stated Mr. Benham. To support the decreed prices, production would be tightly con- trolled by tough government legislation. The legislation meant that pro- ducers delivering more than 200 dozens a week should each have a quota based on 100 per cent of their previous three years' weekly delivery. "That wasn't bad," Mr. Ross said. "They had to begin some- where." Elwyn Nicholson, RR 2, Hol- stein, agreed. "The market should be spread among us since we are all producing," he said. But he doesn't deliver over 200 dozen eggs a week and is, therefore, 'not on a quota. While a producer can deter- mine the number of hens he will keep, there is no way he can de- termine how they are going to lay eggs. "It's just like corn," Mr. Nicholson observed. "One year you get a good crop. Next year you may have a poor one. But you have plowed the same amount of land, spent the same amount of time and sowed the same amount of seed." All egg producers know that hens don't lay well in hot weather. In addition, they have a peak period. They start off by laying fewer eggs when they are young and have a peak period when they mature and then level off. • DING -,--Egg producers say that the price of feedmeal ens has increased by almost 100 per cent a ton. Some. ucers like Sinclair Ross, Rothsay, produce their own feedmeal on the farm. But the price of eggs is still too low, producers say, and must go up if they are to stay In That's Why a farmer can't de- liver the same amount of eggs every week the whole year. Those who have only one building have to empty it for cleaning. This netessitated some adjust- ment to ensure that the producers met their quota. Thars how credit quota came into being. First it was seven times the nor- mal quota. This meant that if a producer did not send any eggs, he still could deliver as many as seven times his weekly quota. The number went up to 20 but was reduced `to 12. after the destruc- tion of the 28 million rotten eggs. The original quota ' was never intended to stay there for ever, ff anything, it was meant to main- . tain production at a certain level. The surplus, though, continued to go up and the quota was cut.down accordingly. At the moment it is 75 per cent of the original and may be reduced. The reduction of the quota means that the farmers have the problem of carrying the cost of production below capacity. And they must stick to the quota. This is because they do not get paid the same amount for the eggs above their quota that they take to graders and of course they can't sell them privately—not for human .consumption: The producers who are not on a quota - (those who produce less than 200 dozen eggs a week) are supposed to sell their eggs through the graders and thus pay the levy. But some of them don't. One producer who is on a.quota said a lot of them simply sell all their eggs on their routes. Existence of a quota does not irk producers as . much as the increase in levy. -"After all, we are trying to control the surplus." While appreciating the exis- tence of the Ontario Egg Pro- ducers' Marketing Board, pro- ducers openly dislike the levy. "The board ,has ' done one thing; Mr. N''iioOn a ltd, "At Beast n ► we` got tlnr`same l for a dozen eggs every week." "It's trying," Mr. Leith said. "It's doing the best it can." It is of no consolation to the producers that the levied money goes to the operation of the board and to paying for Ontario's share of the 28 million rotten surplus eggs that were destroyed, and for the $10 million debt incurred by the CEMA, While not directly referring to the levy, Mr. Leith ode a - ment that shifts the surplus re- sponsibility to the Federal Gov - eminent, and, by implication, the levy. ' The Federal Governunrent, Mr. Leith said, should not have - lowed. the importation of eggs from the United States' 'because they were cheaper. lie was .refer ring to a period early this year when for several months eggs from the United States were al- lowed' in Ontario. •' Processc s, Mr. Leith said, bought them because they were cheaper. "There was nothing the. board could do," he said, "it was the Government's. policy" The board, he noted, could only continue storing the eggs because they weren't bought. In the end they\went bad because it certain- ly couldn't cope with the surplus. In addition to ' complaining about the levy, producers.don't like paying it on all -those eggs that are cracked .and for which they are paid less. Like any other•gro`up, produc- ers are human and have been trying to get the best of both worlds: enjoying the prices authorized by the board and also selling over -quota eggs privately and not informing the board, which they are supposed to. "It is rumoured," one egg man said with a wink, "and note rumoured ( that., even -some grad- ing station are selling eggs with- out informing the bid,,, .e n Tic bei sena this or the Wit ,d i roOld iiot have introduced a new recording sys- tem. While the board did not give dodging of regulations as one of the reasons and talked about standardizing the recording sys- tem nationally, it is true that the system helps catch the dodgers. The system simply calls" for four copies of any shipment records: one for the producer, one for the truck drier;. nee gland one theboar& ' Producers n: e whole process, :or rather r ended what was a result. of actions others: in other words, - wanted, more on for eggs because the � of thing else was g r . ""If we have topes! less, I Won't it it," lir. N "`... , son aid, that % mates his feed partly frOl 4g''ralns in hilt farm. Mr, Ross t hoihad a contract with a feed' But that was too �►d. New he,. planning a .feeder opera- tion beside bis barn, `�+ Mr. Leith. noted that. t.. "feed. price has. gone up almost leo per cent", and the farmer who didn't want to be quoted, simpir fid. the price of every exert gas has.gone lip drastically since the Depression. The board only controls the price of eggs the produces get and not what the wholesat and etailers ask for. Mr. Leith laimed that.producers won't sit till and watch retailers aid wholesalers make all the Mr. Ross simply said the pry; of the egg is. too low and will; hove to ga, up." Mr. Treleaven, .a'; grafi stated, "The producer is notget- ting anything, The Whol and the retailers►� are the ;oaes making all.. the money.". . He noted, of course, that as'a grader he is only paid for grading Mr, oPggsk Leith f,;� '�tar-'. estu>g olbaera ... laid: "lam Only maiwiia reit more (grading) a dozen than I was making in 1950." That's 24 years ago! • . In its attempt to keep. the pro- ducers and the graders informed of what it is doing, the board issues a stream of circulars and . publishes a newsletter called The Cackler. Looking at'a pile of the Please turn to Page 3 WASTE OF EGGS in Canada has caused a national scandal. About 28 million eggs hayil been destroyed. Ontario alone will have to pay the Canadian Egg Marketing Agency be- tween 51.2 million and 51.3 million for its share of the surplus eggs.