Marketing Boards = Agricultural Apartheid

It is interesting to hear world leaders invoke the image of apartheid when arguing against the trade distorting subsidies used by the EU and the USA. This week Jean Cretien and others did this in the trade talks to try to bolster the ability of third world countries to participate in world agriculture trade. They also argued that these subsidies increase the cost to consumers in the EU and USA $1,000.00 annually.

What I find so frustrating is that they (Canadian Polititians) cannot seem to understand that we have this type of "agricultural apartheid" right here in Canada in the form of Marketing Boards.

Firstly, Marketing Boards restrict the right to production to a select few who have structured the quota and levy system and rules regarding pricing and farm size in such a way as to only protect the very large farms within the system. The Marketing Boards use the Natural Products Marketing Act to exercise ownership over a market rather than to regulate the market. Other farmers are limited to the ghetto of small unproductive size flocks and markets that stay under their radar.

Secondly, they are hugely subsidized through tax right offs with the purchase of quota and the ability of depreciating quota values over time. How quota can have depreciation in the way that a car or barn does is an especially obscene subsidy. The levy system charges consumers in Canada approximately 40 cents per dozen eggs in order that they can subsidize the export of industrial eggs to the USA for making such products as shampoo. Marketing Boards are both trade distorting and costly to the Canadian consumer.

As a certified organic farmer who has been forced out of the organic egg business by marketing boards I am especially appalled by their actions in Canada. As an individual who worked hard and devoted thousands of dollars to develop the organic egg business over the past 7 years I find the parallels to Apartheid even more poignant. Allowing me to build the business to an economic success with markets beyond the ghetto only to have it taken away by regulation set to protect the few rich egg farmers is precisely what white South Africans did during the time of Apartheid. They would allow coloreds and blacks to set up business outside the ghetto and if the business became a success they would use the rules of Apartheid to take over the business.

Finally, to those who view Marketing Boards and their quota as a form of franchise similar to McDonalds’, if I wished to buy a burger joint and sell burgers as McDonalds’ burgers then of course I would have to pay the franchise price and abide by the rules of McDonalds. However, if I open an upscale restauraunt and sell an expensive burger McDonalds has no right to demand a royalty or levy on that burger. I deserve the same opportunity to business of upscale marketing that Choices and Thrifties enjoyed as retailers who identified the demand for upscale products not being served by Safeway. Safeway has every right to compete in the market place with these upstarts but it does not have the right to force them to pay a Quota in order to sell food.

It is only with the agricultural apartheid in Canada created by the abuses under the Natural Products Marketing Act that I as an organic farmer can be treated so wrongly. It is interesting that the Natural Products Marketing Act was created at a time when apartheid in South Africa was at its most vicious stage and developed when we in the western democratic world were lobbying for its demise.

It is time to lobby for the undoing of Agricultural Apartheid in Canada. End Marketing Boards Now.

Yours truly,

Fred Reid

cc:
Hon. Gordon Campbell
Hon. John Vandongen
COABCⁱ Newsletter
Gunta Vitins
Hon. Jean Cretien
Hon. Paul Martin
Editors, Vancouver Sun

December 6, 2003