Abbotsford, B.C. chicken producer Frank Flokstra figures his industry, with its marketing price-setting system, has fallen under the control of processors.
As president of the British Columbia Chicken Growers’ Association, he believes the national group Chicken Farmers of Canada has ceased to be an effective national instrument for growers facing lower prices.
“I think farmers have to be involved and not just sit back and be manipulated,” he said. “We feel processors are going the American way to integration. We feel the pressure more and more where processors are essentially dictating to the boards and through the boards, telling us what to do.”
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The B.C. chicken growers’ group is trying to find out if farmers in other provinces feel the same way.
Last week, in Canadian Poultryman magazine, it ran an advertisement asking farmers across the country to contact the Abbotsford office to indicate if they support or oppose the drift in chicken industry policy – a 1995 deal which allows each province to negotiate production levels with processors, within the cap of a maximum eight percent increase each year.
There have been complaints it has caused too much production and subsequent price drops.
Quebec is threatening to opt out of the production-setting system and withhold as much as $900,000 in levies to Chicken Farmers of Canada if changes are not made.
System not followed
Flokstra said part of the problem is that some provinces are not even following the new system.
“Deals were made within the walls of the national meetings but once provinces leave the meeting, everybody did their own thing,” he said. “That’s what’s causing the problem for producers.”
Part of the problem also is the new emphasis on chicken exports, he added. It has produced a two-price system for chicken that hurts farmers.
Processors see that farmers are willing to produce birds at a price lower than the domestic price. “If I was a processor, I’d say to a farmer that you can grow both those birds for the lower price.”
Flokstra said there is need for a national system with a blended price, higher than the current export price but lower than the domestic price which many processors are not paying anyway.
“We have sent a message to the processors that we are willing to grow birds for a lot less,” said the B.C. producer leader. “We don’t want to do that and it has knocked out industry down across the country.”
Flokstra said his informal poll of producers is an attempt to find out if there is farm-level support for a change in the system.
“Supply management isn’t working. They now call it orderly marketing and I’m not sure even the marketing is all that orderly.”
