reply to Loren,
Loren asked:
Would you find explaining briefly what they quota is on/for? Set by
who, incumbent upon whom? Sorry if this was explained in the original;
I missed something. $100/chicken sounds wacky no matter what it's for.
Supply management was established in the mid-sixties for broilers, eggs,
turkeys, hatching eggs and milk. All production is managed on a quota
basis by industry run Marketing Boards established under acts of
Parliament. You cannot produce outside of this system except for small
amounts (e.g.: in B.C. 99 chickens). If you want to raise chickens for
eggs, you have to purchase quota at $100/bird. It's traded on the open
market just like any other commodity. What is even more insidious is
that no one is interested in selling quota of less than 15,000 bird lots
(the size of a small egg producer). Even if you wanted to purchase
quota for 1,000 birds ($100,000.00) you would have some difficulty
finding someone willing to sell it to you. Supply management is great
for some farmers in that it guarantees a market and a price for eggs at
all times. There are no uncertainties (that's why quota is so
expensive - you can make money in supply management) but quota should
never have been allowed to accrue value in the marketplace. Established
farmers argue that there is no other way but there are other models in
Europe. They are anxious about the value of their share of the 7
billion dollars of quota value (in essence, just paper) in the Canadian
supply managed system. This is why successive governments will do
nothing materially to change it or erode the value of quota - because
they would be stung for the loss of value. I agree it is wacky. The
B.C. Organic Growers have been negotiating with Marketing Boards (Veg
too, though not supply managed) for over a year but that is another bad
dream.
Paddy
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 11 2000 - 22:02:08 EDT