GOULDS, Nfld. – Eric Williams greets a mainland visitor at the door of his farmhouse with an accent as thick as the fog that rolls in and out of nearby St. John’s.
He is the godfather of Newfoundland’s dairy supply management system, an occasional consultant to dairy farmers in Russia and Ukraine and a relentless advocate for agriculture in his very non-agricultural province.
But today, Williams wants to talk about land.
“We don’t buy our land down here,” he said. “We make it.”
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Later, he proved the point. A short drive from the house is a 10-acre “field” that this summer has been bulldozed from bush and cleared of rocks.
It is barren-looking ground now, a cleared space ringed by a wall of stones picked from the land. This province is called “The Rock,” after all.
By next year, though, it will be green with crop, probably timothy hay or clover. He also grows eight acres of vegetables.
That is how Williams has built his 400-acre farm since starting in 1959 with nine cows and 20 cleared acres.
Every year, as the money allowed it, he has cleared 10 acres here, 20 acres there. These days, it costs Williams $3,000-$4,000 to “make” an acre of farmland.
And he is far from finished.
“I’d like to have 500 acres before I turn it over,” said the 59-year-old as he drove over fields sprinkled around the suburban Goulds area of the Newfoundland capital. Sons Crosbie and Scott and nephew Terry work on the farm and are interested in taking over some day.
“I like to think that land is your very soul,” said Williams. “That’s why I got into farming.”
Not long ago, developers offered more than $1 million for the farm. He turned them down.
“What would I do with money but no land? I built this farm and that means a lot.”
Pond View Farm, with 240 cattle including 150 milking cows, is one of the largest of Newfoundland’s 52 dairy farms.
And it is just one of the things Williams is proud to have helped build.
Another is Newfoundland’s dairy supply management system.
“It took us 17 years to get it and it has been beautiful for the industry.”
Supply management was introduced in 1983 and Williams was the first chair of the Newfoundland Milk Marketing Board.
To keep public support, the board was cautious in the pace of increases to get milk prices to the provincial cost of production, which is higher than elsewhere in Canada. It took almost a decade to increase the price to COP, now 78 cents per litre compared to 58-62 cents on the mainland where feed is cheaper.
“The COP has been a God-send for the industry. Before it, we were living hand to mouth,” he said. “But we had to be careful not to rile the consumers too much. Milk is a motherhood issue and it has been since our Lord’s time.”
The provincial board also works hard to build public support and good image by spending half a million dollars a year to subsidize milk for Labrador schoolchildren.
Later this year, Newfoundland will become fully integrated into the Canadian national milk supply management system.
“The system is the savior of the industry and dairy farms here are as good as any in Canada,” he said. “But you can’t work for less than it costs.”
Of course, a COP formula does not mean farmers like Williams do not look for ways to cut costs.
Feed, which must be brought from the Prairies by rail, ship and barge, remains one of the largest expenses for Newfoundland poultry and livestock farmers.
This year, many of them banded together to buy a public grain storage facility at a harbor near St. John’s. They are starting to collectively buy their prairie and Ontario grain rations in bulk and store it at the facility. Williams figures it will trim as much as $40 off the cost of feed, which now runs close to $370 per tonne.
“That will lower our costs and most of that saving will be passed to the consumer,” he said with a smile. Left unsaid is that a bit of the saving also would stay in farmers’ pockets.
Williams’ farming acumen and high profile in the Newfoundland and Canadian dairy industries also has allowed him to see some of the world.
Three times he has been part of a team of Canadian food industry specialists sent by the federal government to Russia and Ukraine to advise on how to improve the agriculture sector.
He said the state of the dairy industry in the former Soviet Union is pitiful. When he first went in 1993, “they were 50 years behind us in dairy.”
He found little mechanization, old-fashioned milking methods, little sterilization or pasteurization, and milk with a shelf life of 30 hours instead of Canada’s standard of 23 days.
“It was hard to believe, pitiful. But they are very good people and they have invited me back so I must have done something right.”
Or maybe the Russian farmers just want to hear the sounds of Williams’ Newfoundland accordion playing again.
“It wasn’t all work. We had some fun for sure.”
