BY MARJORIE STEWART
I heard a representative of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and a professor of business studies pontificating on the NAFTA issue on the CBC. The U.S. president has set his sights on the Canadian dairy industry, which brought up a discussion on supply management. Later, an anti-supply management former Liberal MP got the last word. None of them seemed interested in what an ordinary Canadian might want.
Supply management is meant to control production (supply) to avoid over-production and resulting boom and bust cycles. All three pontificators spoke as if economies of (colossal) scale are the only reality for farmers. The first two criticized the Canadian dairy farmers for being rich, while implying that there is no difference between U.S. milk and ours.
The real world critique of industrial dairy farming has more to do with quality of product and ending the torment of the cattle who produce our milk than the profit margins of very rich ‘farmers.’
For a start, U.S. milk contains hormones and antibiotics currently banned in Canada. Industrial milk is produced by tormented cows suffering from mastitis and other ailments pushed beyond their natural capacities and enduring disgusting living conditions. Just ask any woman who’s ever had the misery of mastitis (breast inflammation) if she would inflict that on millions of animals and I doubt if you’d get a positive answer.
Our milk has fewer health and cruelty issues than U.S. milk. Why would we abandon that control?
Furthermore, we need a whole new approach to dairy production in Canada, not the worse practices of the global corporations slobbering at our kitchen doors.
What began as a means of maintaining a steady supply and market for real farmers has become a cartel of huge farm corporations controlling the quotas which were meant to serve the needs of the population, not the greeds of a few who have bought up the means of production, i.e. the farm land. I agree with the pontificators on that.
Let’s hold on to the best of our regulations while we figure out how to reform the dairy quota system.
The other reason I disagree with the three who had the bully pulpit on our national radio channel is that localized farming puts that honorable profession back into the hands of people who live near us and have a vested interest in the health of their lands and livestock and establishing an ecological balance between us and the land.
If you want to learn how to properly ensure the future of coming generations, take a look at the beautiful story told in the movie Farm for the Future, recently reborn ar http://vimeo.com/136857929.
Rebecca Hosking knows that farming is hard work. She is a seventh generation farmer who went out and asked people with credible answers what we are facing when the energy slaves of fossil fuel dissipate and how we can do better farming than the land-destructive ways the energy slaves have enabled.
There are also recent articles in important British publications praising Hosking’s work.
Marjorie Stewart is past chairwoman of the Nanaimo Foodshare Society. She can be contacted at marjorieandalstewart@gmail.com.