Farming needs a new policy direction

Canadian dairy farmers have been deprived of 3.5 percent of our dairy market to European cheese under the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the European Union, 3.5 percent more to Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership countries, and under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, dairy farmers will lose an additional 3.9 percent of Canada’s market. The USMCA also removes our dairy sector’s ability to counter the U.S. dairy industry’s aggressive dumping of high-protein milk ingredients into Canada, and it gives the United States the power to monitor and approve changes to Canadian dairy policy. The $98 million “compensation” package will inevitably pit dairy farmers against each other because funds are being provided to help automate and computerize farms, which will increase production in a shrinking market. This is a recipe for farm consolidation, price depression, job loss, a downward spiral in local economies and further dispossession of the next generation of aspiring farmers. It is hard to imagine how it is possible to compensate for the damage done by recent trade agreements. The Alberta government recently announced it will impose production discipline on the province’s oil companies to bring the price of bitumen-based oil above its cost of production — essentially supply management for the energy sector. Why is it so difficult for the federal government to understand the importance of supply management in agriculture?