Supply Management
A key issue in the current trade negotiations is Supply Management. You may have been reading about this in the news. The National Farmers Union has always stood firmly in defense of this practice and the quote below speaks to it. It is a complex issue and if you want to know more head to the link we have posted here. It is always astonishing to us that people that have absolutely no lived experience with agriculture have strong opinions about it. We hope some good analysis is better than rumour.
“The impending 25% American tariff on all Canadian exports is playing havoc with farmers incomes and consumers’ food security. Key sectors – beef, pork, grain and oilseeds – depend on US markets, while much of our fresh fruit and vegetables as well as processed food is imported. You may not know that our dairy, poultry, and eggs are safe from tariff threats because they are raised, processed and consumed within Canada, in the right amounts at the right time to ensure we always have enough without wasteful surpluses.
Supply Management provides dairy, poultry, and egg farmers with a level of economic stability that is the envy of farmers in the US, and beyond. South of the border, when the market price of milk plummets, the economic hardship frequently causes farming families to lose their farms. This type of devastating price fluctuation for milk doesn’t happen in Canada. The reason: Supply Management.”
Also interesting to note is that the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) in the United States supports Canada’s Supply Management System:
“As the U.S. and Canada navigate uncertainty, unilateral tariff provocations, and the official review of the USMCA trade agreement, the National Family Farm Coalition, supports our Canadian family farming allies in their work to keep Canada’s supply management system intact”.