The Ontario egg marketing board has blocked all quota
transfers as the directors ponder a proposal to introduce an auction.
The decision to block all transfers came at a board meeting
this week and is retroactive to June 5.
The proposal for an auction has been outlined in a letter
sent to all members of the Egg Farmers of Ontario marketing board.
The letter from chairman Scott Graham says the board has been
looking for two years into a way to make quota deals more “transparent” and has
decided to copy the system in place in Quebec.
It is a form of auction similar to the one the Ontario milk
board used before it imposed a cap of $25,000 on quota prices, a cap that has
all but dried up the market.
There is a risk that the egg board will follow in the
footsteps of the milk board because Graham says in his letter that the board
has heard from farmers that “they find it is becoming more difficult to
purchase quota without having to go through egg and pullet industry service representatives.”
That would be egg-grading, hatchery and feed industry
people.
“EFO (Egg Farmers of Ontario) has also heard concerns from
supervisory agencies about the accessibility of quota for all farmers,” says
Graham’s letter.
There have no public documentations, or website postings, of
those concerns being raised by either the Ontario Farm Products Marketing
Commission or the Farm Products Council of Canada.
Graham says the farmers will be consulted in meetings to be
held during the summer and fall.
He also says producers have been involved in discussions on
the issue of quota prices and transfer policies during member-only sessions
during the board’s annual meetings.
He says members in Zone Two, which is south and west of
London, asked in 2011 for the board to establish a Quota Exchange Pool and that
proposal was part of the closed-door sessions at the 2012 annual meeting in
March.
The moratorium on quota transfers, and the proposal for an
auction system, also applies to pullet quota.
On a related front, the directors turned down a request from
some quota holders this week to distribute, rather than rent, quota Ontario
receives as increases from the national agency.
The board has been renting the quota for $7.30 per bird and
using the proceeds as part of its general revenues.
One of the complaints from the dissident farmers is that
they had to sacrifice quota when industry-wide quota cuts were imposed, yet now
they can’t buy quota to fill their barns.
