Tamar Haspel, a food writer I follow on twitter, praised this article in Civil Eats about dairy supply management. The article describes rising grass roots interest in supply management among Wisconsin dairy farmers and some other areas. The Farm Bureau opposes it, of course.
Canada has used supply management for dairy, poultry and eggs since at least 1972 according to this wikipedia article. (I write "at least" because supply management was a feature of depression-era ag policies but I'm not sure Canada used it for dairy.)
Essentially supply management means assigning production quotas to farms, with penalties for over-production. The US used to have supply management in place for wheat, cotton, rice, peanuts, and tobacco, rules which dated back to the 1930's. Over time they've all been dismantled. Judging by the impace of the change on tobacco farmers, the effect of supply management was to slow the decline of farm units. In other words, it was harder to get bigger and easier to stay small, but the trends were the same. The advance of technology and the power of markets still work, just slower.
Slow is what, IMO, the proponents want. If you're a farmer in your 50's, you'd like to keep going until you can retire. Supply management might make that possible. But if you're a young go-getter in your 30's looking to expand and adopt new technologies, you don't like the concept. Politically there's always been more old farmers than young farmers.
No comments:
Post a Comment