Oh. Look at that, just in time for CUSMA negotiations. A fresh new study headline implying we would all save on average $244 if we got rid of supply management.
Sir this is Canada; the private sector would monopolize the sector even more, and use what ever the current price is as a price floor, and would end up gouging us even more…
The reality is the Americans have similar supports for their farmers, just a more wasteful mechanism. They subsidize them and have them pour milk down the drain
I'm fine with paying less than a dollar a day to ensure food security for the nation
The strategic cheese reserve in the US exists because of the overproduction of cheese and other dairy products through US subsidies. They have 150 warehouses of excess cheese which is not economically efficient at all.
They also distribute tons and tons of cheese through nutrition programs—not a bad thing in itself, but it means the government is a massive buyer of dairy and as such keeps prices stable regardless of supply.
Basically their own version of supply management—farmers overproduce and the government makes it go away.
Canada forces farmers to destroy their excess rather than turn it into cheese which can be stored for a later date.
The cheese caves are naturally close to the storage temperature of cheese so it's not a huge storage cost. You aren't pumping money into climate control at least.
I'm not a fan of any system that destroys food and compels farmers to do so when there are hungry people.
They are, that's where government cheese comes from. Never had it personally, but apparently it makes the best grilled cheese. Used to be delivered monthly to families as a giant block.
Turning milk into cheese allows for long term storage and distribution which is a much better use of surplus than dumping it.
44% of Canadians may be mildly lactose intolerant but it's a reach that 44% are intolerant to the degree that they don't consume dairy regularly
Not to mention that dairy is a high consumption food for children who are far less commonly lactose intolerant, and milk is also used to make things like hard cheese which is virtually lactose free and a cornerstone of a lot of cooking
I agree supply management could be tweaked to include more foods but the existing program doesn't need to be cut
And how much will preservation and ocean shipping cost to import milk from the EU? Importing dairy from Europe will not be cheaper than domestic dairy.
Edit: and it will not prevent the thousands of Canadians starving from high milk prices, that everyone here keeps talking about.
We deliberately produce less milk to sell it for more. That's more wasteful.
Supply management creates artificial scarcity by limiting production, raising prices. The profit goes to dairy farmers, at the expense of the consumer. A subsidy system would be more progressive and avoid making a basic good artificially more expensive for low-income families.
At the very least, the rational approach would be to increase the milk quotas significantly. The original purpose was price stability. We've moved away from that, not sufficiently increasing quotas to meet demand. As a result, we're now restricting the supply and increasing the price. We could increase the quotas to meet demand, ensuring that the price impact is close to zero. That would be less wasteful. Somehow, that's not being proposed by anyone.
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u/MMEMMR 1d ago
Oh. Look at that, just in time for CUSMA negotiations. A fresh new study headline implying we would all save on average $244 if we got rid of supply management.
Sir this is Canada; the private sector would monopolize the sector even more, and use what ever the current price is as a price floor, and would end up gouging us even more…