Dairy farmers’ pricing transparent
Re: Sylvain Charlebois’ Feb. 17 column, “Milk is Canada’s white gold.” Like our hard-working colleagues across Canada, it is difficult for Nova Scotia dairy farmers to read the distorted assertions and not even half-truths being spread by Charlebois about supply management and dairy pricing.
Contrary to Charlebois’ claims, consumers benefit from supply management. The system guarantees access to a stable supply of high-quality, healthy and nutritious Canadian dairy products.
Supply management ensures that the supply of dairy products does not exceed the demand. This cushions consumers against the kind of price spikes that are common in the United States. As dairy farmers, we also benefit, in that we can plan our operations for the long term, in order to make a fair return on investment.
What you also don’t hear from Charlebois is that supply management provides our customers and consumers with a transparent pricing mechanism. Unlike grocers, restaurants, banks, car makers, or virtually any other business in Canada, dairy farmers cannot decide to incorporate increased input costs into the price of milk at the farm gate. Our prices are set once a year and announced publicly — for all to see and respond to — in advance by the Canadian Dairy Commission (CDC), an independent Crown corporation.
With respect to the farm gate price increases that started coming on stream this month, it is not a matter of increasing dairy producers’ profit margins but simply of helping them recover part of their production costs which have been increasing for two years — especially feed, energy and fertilizers.
Because our prices are reviewed only once a year, there has been no increase in the farm gate price in the past 12 months, contrary to what you may have seen in other parts of the value chain.
We, dairy farmers, do not like to increase prices any more than anyone else. We all are consumers too, and we have all experienced dramatic price increases for goods and services across the board. Dairy is not looking to take advantage of consumers, but all Canadians lose if farmers are put out of business because they can’t keep up with inflation.
Gerrit Damsteegt, Shubenacadie