It’s the result of consultations that began in 2012 between
the Chicken Farmers of Ontario marketing board and the Association of Ontario
Chicken Processors.
There were invitations to others to provide comments, but
nobody else was directly involved, including hatcheries, feed mills, further
poultry processors or their clients.
Before the process was complete last year, the Ontario Farm
Products Marketing Commission ordered the chicken board to roll back prices to
reflect improvements in feed conversion rates.
Nobody is saying what impact the new formula will have on
prices on Feb. 22.
What the commission is revealing on its website is that
there will be several factors weighing on three price adjustments per year –
feed efficiency, the volume of chicken Ontario can produce and therefore the
production efficiency of barns and changes in costs as measured by data
collected to create an electronic simulation of a model farm.
Ten per cent of the least efficient farms surveyed were
eliminated from the formation of the model farm.
The Ontario Farm Products Commission is leading in another
set of negotiations, mainly between the chicken board and the AOCP, on the
allocation of any increase in production granted by the national chicken agency
to reflect growth in demand.
The chicken board has been holding district meetings with
its producers to gather their views.
As is their habit, the commission, the marketing board and the AOCP are not answering questions posed by reporters or the general public.
In other words, the most powerful institutions in the Ontario farming industry don't think they need to answer anybody's questions.
