WINNIPEG – Ross Ramage cracks a smile as he recalls how he used a truckload of eggs to make a constitutional point in 1971.
British Columbia had set up interprovincial barriers to eggs. Manitoba egg producers and B.C. supermarkets believed the laws were unconstitutional.
So Ramage drove all weekend, picking up fellow Manitoba producer Bob Feldman in Calgary, so they could sell eggs in the parking lot of a B.C. grocery store Monday morning.
“I enjoyed it,” said the Baldur-area farmer, adding that it made national news. “It was more or less just to show we could do it.”
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Ramage was on hand for the Manitoba Egg Producers’ 25th anniversary last week, where farmers recalled the struggles of selling eggs before the marketing board was set up.
“To be truthful, I was against the board when it first came into being, and I fought against it,” Ramage said. Ironically, the government appointed Ramage to the first board of directors.
“Once you get appointed to something, you have to quit talking against it.”
Ramage said he was converted once he learned how the marketing board would work. And he’s convinced it works in the best interests of egg farmers.
In the 1960s, Ramage said he remembers getting 15 cents per dozen when it cost 20 cents to produce the eggs. He would drive from Baldur to Oak Bluff, on the outskirts of Winnipeg, and call wholesalers to see who had the best price.
“It was sort of a strange way to do business,” he said. “You had no allegiance with anybody. Your allegiance was to yourself because you had to try to take home as much money as you could.”
But during the winter, Ramage said he could sometimes get 75 cents per dozen, since many farmers didn’t have insulated barns, and their hens wouldn’t lay eggs.
“That’s the reason everybody stayed in. They were always hoping the other guy would go broke before they did, and then you’d make a good deal out of it.”
Harold Froese said the co-operation of fiercely independent producers in the early days of the board has made it a success story.
The board has concentrated on domestic markets and consumption of eggs in its first 25 years, Froese said. Now, the challenge will be more international.
“We’re just beginning, I think, as an industry to recognize the impact of the trade agreements.”
And people aren’t eating their eggs the same way they used to. Froese said more people eat eggs in a processed form, rather than from the shell.
Japan consumers eat more eggs per capita than any other country, but 45 percent of those eggs are in processed form.
Processed eggs have much smaller profit margins than whole eggs, meaning the industry will have to co-operate to make money.
Ramage said he knows changes are coming, but he hopes things don’t change too much. “We’re getting rid of our product and we get cost of production. If everybody did that on all their products, they’d smile.”
