It’s no surprise to the chair of Manitoba’s egg marketing agency that farmers in his province are at the front of aggressive changes to the traditional egg business.
Harold Froese, a farmer at Oak Bluff, Man., said Manitoba egg farmers saw the results of the last round of world trade negotiations, when tariffs replaced protective border controls for dairy and poultry products, as a signal for change.
Soon after, the province became the cheapest place in Canada for feed grains because the loss of rail transportation subsidies made it the most expensive place to grow grain for export.
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After talking to farmers and others in the industry, Froese said the board changed its regulations to more than double the maximum allowable size of barns.
And it let farmers amalgamate their quota, so family members or neighbors could choose to work together to build bigger, more efficient operations.
Another impetus has been changes in national regulations now allowing provinces to produce eggs outside of the pooling system on contract for the further-processed market.
Penny Kelly, general manager of Manitoba Egg Producers, said the industrial market has been shunned by some provinces.
Historically, processors pay an average of 55 cents per dozen for their eggs, half the price of table eggs. But while the table egg market stays relatively flat, the processing market grows by four to five percent a year, Kelly said.
Dramatic growth
In the early 1970s, five percent of Canadian eggs went to the cheaper market. Today, more than 20 percent end up at the breakers.
Froese said there are no shortage of products made from eggs, from mayonnaise to pharmaceuticals using proteins extracted from egg whites.
Manitoba already supplies about a third of processors’ needs, a move which has helped the province clamp on to more than 11 percent of the country’s total market share.
Froese said Manitoba has always been strong in marketing its eggs, and has tended to be “forward-looking.”
Producers, while they support supply management, have watched closely and been influenced by the debate over central desk selling in cereals and hogs.
Reaction from egg farmers in other provinces has been a bit scrambled.
“I think Manitoba is definitely considered a threat in some ways, because most other provinces are not, at this point, making these changes,” said Froese.
But he thinks Manitoba’s aggressive moves will also spur other provinces to find their own solutions to future trade issues.
