Milk quota follies

The Baes family - father Leon and sons Stephen and Michael - testified at an appeals tribunal hearing at Guelph today, detailing once again why the milk board's quota transfer policies are flawed.

Leon Baes, who immigrated form Belgium in 1967, worked hard with his two sons to establish themselves in dairy farming.

By all accounts, Leon and Michael have been successful, Stephen not so much. They helped Stephen as he struggled within the family enterprise, providing him a barn and home, feed at discount prices and the loan of cows when he needed more milk to meet quota. Leon invested more than $60,000 to renovate his barn, the family put new rooves on the barn and house and they basically helped Stephen make ends meet as his dairy-farming venture failed.

Eventually they realized Stephen's farm was not going to make it, so they sought board permission to transfer his quota into the company owned by Leon and Michael and their wives. They have offered to keep Stephen as an employee, but are sure they can manage his cows much better to avoid the Somatic Cell Count penalties he faced and to bring milk production from well below average into the top 10 per cent in Ontario, which is where their herd ranks.

But the milk board, in its determination to put a lid on quota prices, has banned quota mergers. The board has no regard for the deal the family made that if the sons' ventures should ever fail, the quota would revert to Leon. Nor does the board have any regard for all of the blood, sweat and tears the family has poured into their business.

No, the board has decided that the only way to transfer quota is through its monthly exchange. But, ever since the board imposed a ceiling of $25,000 per kilogram on prices, hardly any has been offered for sale. Michael testified that even if he were to offer top price for quota, he would only be able to get enough for one teat of one cow via the exchange.

It's no surprise that the milk board has faced lots of appeals against its extremely restrictive quota transfer policy. It is also no surprise, but a travesty of justice, that the public interest has been totally ignored by the body appointed to ensure public accountability - the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission. The commission operates more as a rubber stamp and apologist for marketing board policies, no matter matter how foolish, than as a public-interest supervisory body.

This restrictive quota transfer policy is holding production in some of the least efficient and poorly-managed dairy farms in the province. It is banning the most efficient, progressive and well-managed farms from expanding. It is ensuring that the consuming public has to put up with below-average milk quality, such as that from Stephen Baes's herd, while being denied increased supplies from the highest-quality herds. Michael and Leon's operation ranked fourth for Perth County in herd management last year.

There is no question that the Baes family ought to be able to merge their quotas. There is likewise no question that all dairy-farming families who want to merge their quotas ought to be granted that right. And there is no question that the milk board's current quota-transfer policies are a failure. Just because a majority of dairy farmers may or may not support the policies does not make them right.