I'm from Canada[1] and supply management protects more than just a market. It protects the landscape too.

Factory farms pollute the surface and groundwater.

The big corporate players will fight hard protect their right to dump their 'externalities' (read manure) in the cheapest way possible.

Sadly, because uncontaminated land and water is not accounted for in the 'market', they will likely succeed.

[1] AND I grew up in a dairy farming area.

You don't need supply management to do that. Not only that, supply management is a terrible way to do that.

This is a great comment, and really a key here.

If you have a nail (environmental problem) hit it with a hammer (environmental regulation or tort liability deregulation).

You can hit it with back end of a plastic screwdriver (regulate supply and demand), but you'll never do as good of a job (flush nail with no external damage) as you will using the right tools.

And, to stretch the metaphor, the handle of the screwdriver might shatter and and cause a bunch of new problems without ever hammering the nail.

What if you have assorted fastening implements that require different affixing tools, but they're all necessary because businesses seeking short-term profit have supplanted families who want the land to be healthy for their children?

> supplanted families who want the land to be healthy for their children?

That's a fairy-tale story that the farming industry has been pushing around for decades to portray the image of the old-school farmer working dawn to dusk to support the family.

Agriculture hasn't been like that since the dust bowl. And even then, they didn't really care about the "healthy for their children", the dust bowl happened largely due to farmers (mostly small and mid-size by then) overfarming their lands and using deep plowing to overcome top-soil degradation.

Agriculture is a high-risk, capital-intensive industry that benefits dramatically from economies of scale.

Drop the romantic, nostalgic fantasia that so many still carry around farming.

We look and learn from our neighbours to the South, and what outcomes we see down there generates strong public support to maintain the system we have.

Frankly, as a consumer, American dairy, beef, poultry and produce make me nervous.

> generates strong public support to maintain the system we have.

Oh, yeah, everyone loves a protectionist market, when they're part of it...

I'm not a farmer; as a consumer in a managed market, wouldn't your platitudes imply that I should desire a free market? As it is, the products I buy are reasonably priced, high quality, and safe.

Even consumers frequently love the idea of a protected ("managed" market is a misleading term for "we subsidize and protect certain incumbents"), particularly when it is a national market (for nationalistic reasons) or when it is associated with a romantic/emotional vision ("oh, the poor little honest canadian farmers, working dawn to dusk and being protected from the evil massive corporations").

This is particularly true when you're not price-sensitive (i.e. poor), which by being on Hacker News, you most likely aren't.

So you don't mind paying more for that emotional feeling that you're "protecting" those farmers, even if other people might be more sensitive to the cost.

A government protecting farmers isn't any different than it protecting monopolies, and is just as bad. The only difference is the emotional & nostalgic impact on people.

The difference, in this case, is objectively measurable: Canadian poultry, beef, dairy and produce are generally safer than American.

Also, I'm Canadian. I'm not making an American tech salary, not by any stretch of the imagination.

> The difference, in this case, is objectively measurable: Canadian poultry, beef, dairy and produce are generally safer than American.

I'd like to see sources for that, and even if that's true, it doesn't imply that the market subsidies are the cause of that.

> Also, I'm Canadian. I'm not making an American tech salary, not by any stretch of the imagination.

You don't have to be making a tech salary to be less sensitive about the price of beef.

I never quite understood this. I'm from eastern EU, I don't consider my country "poor", but people who are on the bottom of the economic ladder do not eat beef here ( cheap beef is ~4usd/lbs, chicken thighs are 1.5usd/lbs ). Maybe it's just my ignorance, but for me this sounds equally ridiculous to someone who expresses his concerns about how poor people could afford lobsters if the price goes any higher. Pure meat is expensive, and it's a luxury, not a necessity.

The prices of meats are roughly equal to the US and making 20k$/yr makes you rich here, money won't be a limiting factor when it comes to food. Avg. salary in Missisipi is 40k$/yr, and that's the lowest one.

Of course you can't eat out in the nicest places every day from that salary. This is what constitutes being poor in the US ( not being able to do that )? You can always cook at home, and it's very cheap, is the price of the food really a big weight for people in the US ( let's say the bottom 40% )?

Maybe being poor is just being poor compared to others in your area, and it's mostly a mental thing. I lived on 250usd/month and life was good. Went to the farmers market, cooked my own food, I felt spoiled by the food choices I could make. I can make amazing food from various intestines, the taste is amazing, cheap as hell, and it's the best quality protein you can get your hands on for example.

Eating _at least one serving_ of beef, pork or poultry in two out of three meals a day is considered normal in America.

There's good reason they have an obesity problem.

Canada does not subsidize dairy farmers; it regulates and manages their production. It's a subtle but important distinction.

It is a subsidy in practice: you're restricting competition to increase the profits of the farmers.

Call it whatever you want, but the government it guaranteeing the farmer's profits, and society is paying for it.

I'll call it what it is: a managed market. It's not a subsidy.

Words have meaning.

Canadian consumers as a group pay the same amount for milk as a group, regardless of how much or little milk they demand, by means of government regulation. Canadian dairy farmers as a group receive the same amount regardless of how much or little milk they produce and how much or little milk consumers demand.

That the subsidy to the farmers is coming as $.30 per liter of milk as opposed to a single check at the end of the month doesn’t make it any less of a subsidy.

Canadian consumers as a group buy a variant amount of dairy products without any Government requirement of a minimum purchase amount.

Canadian dairy farmers coordinate with one another with the assistance of the Canadian Government to avoid over-producing and under-producing, and to sell as a single bargaining unit to purchasers. At no point does the Canadian Government subsidize dairy farmers to produce products, nor does the Canadian Government rebate Canadian consumers for purchasing dairy products.

Moreover, the Canada Food Guide no longer includes dairy as an essential food group. Most Canadians live close to the border and could cross-border shop.

There is no subsidy.

> Canadian dairy farmers coordinate with one another with the assistance of the Canadian Government to avoid over-producing and under-producing

Translating: the Canadian government protects collusion between the Canadian farmers to reduce competition and extract undue economic profits from society.

Yep, it is a subsidy.

Along with the proximity to the American border and the duty-free purchasing allowed, CETA opened up broader quotas on importing dairy products from Europe without tariffs, _and buyers are not availing themselves of the full extent of it_. There is no extraction of undue economic profits because consumers can, and yet do not, access other markets without tariff.

There is no monetary or financial assistance provided, none whatsoever.

> opened up broader quotas

I love how you try to justify that this isn't a subsidy by using the word "quotas"!

I never eat any animal products when travelling in the US.

They are of much lower quality, and full of hormones and additives.

Can we import whatever model France has?

I’m fed up with croissants made without butter and “cheese” that tastes like rubber at high prices.

If it requires subsidizing farmers through higher income taxes, so be it.

That makes a lot more sense than a government policy of high food prices.

What next, a tax on child care? A vaccine tax? Military enrolment fee?

That's not an artifact of supply management so much as it is health regulations. The Government is worried that unpasteurized dairy will kill us, so we miss out on a fair amount of cheeses.

It’s not just the unpasteurized dairy I’m missing.

The prices on the cheese that we import is dramatically higher than expected for an imported good.

Imported cheese tariffs are an international trade issue.

CETA was intended to help with this, but grocers et al aren't choosing to import European cheeses. :(

https://business.financialpost.com/news/economy/buyer-beware...

The tariffs exist to protect the supply management system.

No tariffs = disappearance of supply management overnight.

CETA only slightly increased the amount of cheese that can be imported duty/tariff free.

It’s by no means a free-for-all with EU cheese. I wish it were.

Purchasers are not purchasing European product _despite not having reached regulated limits_.

Regulation was relaxed, and the purchasers are not availing themselves of the opportunity to purchase European goods.

It doesn't matter that it's not a free for all, because the limits have not been hit.

If you meant the EPA, it looks like it isn't doing too great job of protecting the land either if peoples taps are running with manure like the article shows.

How do you propose we protect the landscape, water, ecology?

Do you have any realworld examples for us to study and learn from?

> How do you propose we protect the landscape, water, ecology?

Through environmental regulation, protected areas, permitting, environmental reviews, etc. This is the common model in most of the world. It works well in some places and not well in others, just as laws sometimes work, and sometimes don't.

Passing subsidies to farmers might (strong emphasis on might) have some unintended benefits to the environment (or not), but it is a terrible way to try to protect the environment, particularly because most (if not all) of the investment in this goes to the profit margins of the farmers.

And sure, there are plenty of real world examples: look at environmental review and permitting processes for your city or state. I happen to be very close to a number of environmental engineers who handle such permits on a daily basis, both on the granting as well as on the requesting side.

Want to build a road on your farm, or increase your farming area? You'll likely have to submit a permit to Fish & Wildlife, as well as to the county water authority, to the Army Corps of Engineers, etc. Depending on the type of work, you might need to hire an engineering firm to do hydrological analysis and understand how the work impacts water drainage and flow, how it impacts flow downstream to other properties, and often enough to sensitive environments miles away.

One example was a friend of mine doing work for a homeowner in an unincorporated area who wanted to build a culvert under their driveway to increase drainage and reduce the risk of flood on his property.

Well, while building the culvert would increase the flow and decrease the risk of flood in his property, it would also mean that the flow downstream would increase significantly, resulting in higher flood risk to other properties downstream. Open, rugged soil acts as a sponge and as "potential energy dissipators", slowing the flow of water during heavy rains. Paving means that all the water flows downstream quickly, flooding lower areas.

Also, the culvert would channelize a lot of the water flow, meaning that the toxic substances from the driveaway and the home's roof would not be spread out in a harmless way (the solution to pollution is dilution) that can be handled by the ecosystem, bubt would flow quickly to streams and pools in the lower areas, increasing the concentration of such substances to unacceptable levels and damaging the critical environment for an at-risk endemic species of frogs.

While the homeowner dismissed my friend's concerns and decided to request the permit anyway, it is highly likely that the permit will be rejected because of the points above (actually, I know the person handling the permit on the government's side, it will be rejected for sure).

The family dairy farms and conservationists in Wisconsin have all those tools and have been actively trying to use them.

Why do they continue to lose?

Probably efficiencies of scale.

And those tools aren't there to protect small, inefficient businesses, their existence doesn't make small, inefficient businesses more successful.

Quite the opposite: regulation disproportionately impacts small businesses in a negative way.

So you could even argue that they are "losing" because of those tools.

Landscape protection is very important, but I agree with comment below. Supply Chain Management(SCM) is being promoted via such claims. While it may be willing to do landscape protection now, there's no guarantee that it will continue to do so in future. Corporations are known to eventually focus on profits.

"American government contributed around $22.2 billion in direct and indirect subsidies to the dairy sector in 2015."

That's over double the amount that New Zealand's dairy sector (grass fed, not housed in sheds) makes from exports each year. Not only is the industrial US system inefficient and subsidised, but the milk quality is poor as well. And let's not avoid the question of burping cows and Methane emissions.

https://www.realagriculture.com/2018/02/u-s-dairy-subsidies-...

It's a managed market. If consumer trends in Canada shifted away from dairy it would not somehow survive.

Instead, dairy farmers collaborate to avoid production waste and to coordinate for seasonal/cyclical changes in demand and production.

It’s hard to imagine higher prices without milk users getting creative.

Lots of products that should be made with butter are made with oil.

Alfredo sauces made with soybean oil instead of cream.

The products that have these substitutions will have a greater discount and more sales.

Frozen pizza makers slacking on cheese toppings.

Processed cheese.

And that’s just the industrial use side.

Interesting that your list is entirely processed foods.

Probably best never to buy such products at all, and if you do, you probably aren't the sort that cares whether the fat is from butter or from canola.

But the products exist because people buy them as cheaper substitutes, reducing dairy demand.

Milk drinkers will just drink less when the price is higher (sometimes voluntarily, sometimes involuntarily).

Or do they buy them because they're convenient?

Or do they buy them because they're cheaper than restaurant or take-out alternatives?

Or do they buy them because the packaging is appealing?

Regardless, processed food is generally shit, everywhere. Discerning health and quality conscious consumers in any nation aren't likely to favour purchasing processed food.

Don't mention steel in relation to US-Canada trade. Canada is extremely unhappy to see China's steel constantly exempted while Canadian steel is subject tariff.

As other posters have pointed out, Canada's protected dairy market is about far more than keeping farms going. It is about regulating a stable food supply and associated external impacts.

> Canada's protected dairy market is about far more than keeping farms going. It is about regulating a stable food supply and associated external impacts.

Canadians do consume a fair amount of dairy in global terms, but honestly it's not a big part of most people's diets by calories. If dairy got more expensive for a few months, or a decade, or forever, people would just buy less of it. If it got less expensive, those inclined might buy more of it sometimes.

There is no moral or practical benefit to to Canadian society at large in "stabilizing" the dairy supply, if the current regime could even be considered that.

There's also that the Canadian Food Guide just dropped dairy as an essential food group.

https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/