One of the main items on national radio news on the morning of the first day of the Manitoba Dairy Conference was that Canada might have to abandon supply management to appease European and New Zealand trade negotiators.
The story didn’t draw any special attention at the conference because foreign attacks on supply management are now commonplace.
“We’ve never experienced as much media interest as we have in the past year and a half,” Manitoba Dairy Producers chair David Wiens said in an interview. “It used to be very rare that there’d be anything at all about supply management.”
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The attacks on supply management from the European Union and members of the Trans Pacific Partnership were discussed at the conference, but they didn’t seem to cast a pall over a generally comfortable mood.
The future may look cloudy for a system that has produced a solid body of profitable farmers, but producers were feeling confident and the trade show was bustling.
Farmer Ed Friesen said he knows supply management is under assault from many quarters, both foreign and within Canada, but that doesn’t make him unwilling to invest in his farm.
“We still grow a little bit every year,” he said. “We have bought quota every year for the past five years.”
Friesen said it can be unsettling to keep hearing news stories about how the government might be forced to give up supply management to achieve trade deals, but dairy skins have thickened over the years.
“I’ve been in the industry for 15 years and we’ve been talking about this for 15 years,” Friesen noted.
