HALIFAX – Northern New Brunswick dairy farmer Jacques Laforge, one of Canada’s longest-serving current farm leaders, says he will step down next year as president of the Dairy Farmers of Canada.
He will have served seven years in the DFC during turbulent times.
“I was tempted to step down this year but there are still some loose ends I want to deal with,” Laforge said July 14. “This will be my last year.”
Unless he has a change of heart, his successor will be chosen at the summer annual meeting in Winnipeg next July.
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One of the loose ends is his attempt to shepherd the organization into creating a national milk pool.
The first step is to change the national governance structure of the industry to replace the existing P5 (Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island), P4 (the western provinces) and Newfoundland with one national decision-making body.
Urged on by Laforge, delegates in Halifax agreed to have concrete proposals developed for a national governance structure in time for a debate at the February 2011 policy conference.
His time in office has been marked by uncertainty over the outcome of World Trade Organization talks and their implication for supply management and the fallout from a WTO ruling that dairy exports from Canada are illegally subsidized.
It led to a worsening of the domestic structural surplus of solid non-fat material that DFC and the processing industry had to confront through industry co-operation and stronger rules to manage the surplus.
He developed a close relationship with agriculture minister Gerry Ritz and was rewarded by a government decision to fulfill a longstanding DFC demand for cheese compositional standards that force cheese makers to use more Canadian content rather than cheaper imports.
And Laforge developed co-operative relations with processors.
“I can say without hesitation that Jacques has always been open to talk with us, to keep communication lines open,” Dairy Processors’ Association of Canada president Don Jarvis said. “I think he was forward looking and willing to nudge the industry toward change. I can say I am glad from a processor point of view that we will be working with him for the next year.”
Former Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Bob Friesen praised Laforge for his representation of the dairy sector at CFA, his leadership in the industry and his willingness to work with politicians, processors and other sectors to advance the interests of dairy producers.
“I think he was an excellent president,” said Friesen. “He was on the ball on all issues. He was diligent on the trade and WTO files and understood them and he understood the need to build strong relationships with others.”
In his president’s speech to last February’s DFC policy conference, he said the organization must confront the reality that within a decade, the industry will lose almost a quarter of its farmers.
And there is a growing threat that existing tariff protections might not be enough to keep cheap imports out of the Canadian market.
“(An) issue that we need to either complete or address, because of the low international prices, concerns about the tariff wall and products coming over the tariff wall,” he said.
“We definitely need to develop some mechanisms and take some decisions and approaches that deal with that if the time comes.
“With a high Canadian dollar and a very low market price, it is not something that is impossible. It can happen at any time.”
