October 21, 2011
Learning about Supply Management on the City to Country Tour
Staff Report by Melissa Matlow, Campaigns Manager, WSPA Canada
I recently participated in a City to Country Tour, a day-long mobile conference to explore solutions for achieving a better food system for all — people, animals and our environment. Twelve different bus tours were organized to encourage people to learn and discuss twelve recommendations for achieving a more accessible, healthful, humane and sustainable food system presented in a series of reports funded by the Metcalf Foundation.
I was thrilled to co-facilitate a tour with Janet Horner, who among many roles, chairs the board of FarmStart, an organization that encourages new farmers to develop local, ecologically sound and economically viable enterprises. Our bus was on a quest to better understand the pros and cons of our supply management system.
In Canada, eggs, poultry and milk are supply managed — meaning production is controlled by a quota system to ensure it matches demand. The system ensures farmers get a fair price for their products, discourages overproduction and protects our local food system from cheap food imports. However, as we learned on our tour, this system also imposes many barriers to new and small-scale farmers who use more humane and sustainable production methods.
As part of the tour, we visited Svante Lind's empty cage-free egg farm and grading station. "The reason I have no hens is because of the problems with supply management," Mr. Lind told us. His Best Choice grading station closed in May because they couldn't get enough eggs to keep the operation profitable.
At his peak, Svante Lind had 90,000 hens in battery cages but now he's establishing a model cage-free egg farm to further scientific research and educate the public about more humane and sustainable egg production. Born in Sweden, Svante looks to his home country for guidance on better farming practices but believes the demand for cage-free eggs already exists in Canada and is steadily increasing. He is inspired by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, who is best known for creating the character Pippi Longstocking, but who is also a big animal advocate. Lindgren was instrumental in achieving legislation to raise farm animal welfare standards in Sweden. Svante's battery cages are now empty but our tour was invited to walk through the dark and eerie rows. Many people were shocked by how small the cages were.
Despite the growing demand for cage-free eggs and government and corporate initiatives to phase-out battery cages in the US and EU, the Canadian supply management system doesn't provide any incentives for farmers to produce eggs more humanely.
We then visited Cooper's Farm, where farmer Steve Cooper showed us his small flock of free-range egg laying hens and broiler chickens that he is permitted to keep without quota. The birds are kept on pasture in mobile coops and provide eggs and meat for his community shared agriculture (CSA) program.
In Ontario, an egg farmer can have up to 99 laying hens to produce eggs without quota for farm gate sales. If that farmer wants to increase his/her flock, he/she has to buy quota which is expensive (currently $240/hen) and pay a levy to the marketing board. Mr. Cooper says he can't meet his customers' demand for cage-free eggs with his flock of 99 hens but it doesn't make economic sense for him to buy quota to have more hens and he doesn't need the marketing board's help to sell his eggs.
FarmStart produced an excellent report which investigates this issue in greater detail and presents a number of options for reforming the system including:
- increasing quota exemptions
- developing alternative markets that are not subject to quotas
- decreasing minimum quota levels
- establishing separate quotas for specialty products
- offering exemptions for specialty products
- offering exemptions for producers who sell through direct marketing
- setting aside a certain amount of processing capacity for alternative producers
Thanks to Sustain Ontario, the Toronto Food Policy Council, the Greater Toronto Area Agricultural Action Committee, Foodshare Toronto, the Foodshed Project and World Crop Project for organizing these tours and thanks to the Metcalf Foundation for funding it!
