NIVERVILLE, Man. – The Canadian Egg Marketing Agency has given Manitoba producers until March 24 to agree to get rid of 130,000 laying hens.
CEMA is threatening to shut Manitoba out of a national program that helps balance prices farmers receive for their eggs.
Manitoba farmers will lose $9 million this year if they don’t comply with the order, said CEMA chair Felix Destrijker. They also face fines.
But Destrijker acknowledged such a move would lower egg prices in Manitoba and threaten the whole supply management system for eggs.
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“We must stop this time bomb from going off,” said Destrijker at the Manitoba Egg Producers annual meeting last week.
“But I don’t know how. Do you?”
Manitoba producers contend that the 130,000 hens are not hurting the national system and should stay.
They are also protesting a recently announced quota increase to the National Farm Products Council, which oversees supply management for the egg and poultry sectors.
Last week, the council convened a meeting between CEMA, Manitoba producers and government representatives to try to clear the impasse.
Council chair Cynthia Currie said she thinks producers have the will to fix their disagreement on their own, but added the council will use its authority to make a ruling if needed.
In a March 6 interview, she said the council would decide “in the next few days” how it will handle both CEMA’s request for more quota, and Manitoba’s complaint.
The fight has deep-seeded roots. It sprang from a philosophical argument about how to handle changes in Canadian egg use.
Processors now use 20 percent of eggs produced in Canada. They pay 50 cents per dozen for the “industrial” eggs. Eggs under the quota system earn farmers $1 per dozen.
They pay levies to make up the price difference between the premium table egg market and the lower-priced industrial market.
Consumers absorb most of the cost of these levies.
Processors import millions of eggs a year because they can’t get enough eggs in Canada. Most provinces have agreed to increase quota by more than 800,000 hens to help meet processors’ needs, letting the levy system balance the extra costs.
But Manitoba believes the growing industrial market should be filled with Canadian eggs priced at the going world price. They propose a voluntary, controlled system to supply the eggs, but want it to be outside the regular quota system.
Hurt quota system
Harold Froese, chair of Manitoba Egg Producers, argues the proposed 800,000 new quota hens would cost the Canadian system $18 million.
Froese said Manitoba, which is home to Canada’s largest processor, has been left out of the proposed quota increase.
But some of the quota will go to Atlantic provinces, he noted, which do not have any processors.
“This is the sort of thing that happens when you get into deal-making mode.”
He told the meeting that CEMA “is not longer able to make decisions without some help.”
Destrijker, who is stepping down as CEMA chair, said the agency is trying to do what’s best for egg farmers.
His experience at the national agency taught him that “Canada, in reality, is a deal, it’s a living deal, an ongoing deal.”
Froese complained that Quebec owes $3.2 million and Alberta $1.6 million in levies it has withheld from CEMA during this past year’s stormy negotiations. Yet the two provinces have not been threatened with expulsion from the industrial egg program, said Froese.
Destrijker acknowledged the system is in a mess.
“The Manitoba board was certainly not the only board to play games with the national system.”
Destrijker said he’s concerned with the growing role provincial governments are taking in negotiations.
“Everywhere in the country, we see farm leaders serving as government messengers, in front of their own producers.”
