Canada has a ton of such cartels, the egg board, the milk board, the LCBO and so on.

This is really the worst kind of shit. Destroy food so they can charge more, while so many starving people could use that food.

I've heard it a million times, but it'll never stop shocking me to here about this idea: Keeping market value up is more important than reducing starvation.

But that happens in the US as well? See all the stories about farmers dumping milk during the pandemic.

I don't think the comment you replied to was saying it's only bad because Canadian. They were stating every time they hear about food being destroyed it pisses them off. Doesn't matter if it is US, Canada or a dictator doing it in front of the people that were hoping to receive it. It's a shit move.

However, let's not forget the logistics of getting the food to locations it was never thought about getting to when it was "made". Farms pretty much know where their food is going to be sold when it comes time for harvest. Food like milk definitely has an expiration factor as well. So if American farmers can't sell their milk normally and have never tried to arrange for it to be sold elsewhere, getting it to elsewhere before expiration isn't as easy as one might think.

>I don't think the comment you replied to was saying it's only bad because Canadian. They were stating every time they hear about food being destroyed it pisses them off.

But if you're against food waste, shouldn't you be supporting supply management (ie. preventing excess production)?

You state this like I'm not, but this is just as complex and complicated issue. Do you pay farmers to just not grow anything in exchange for not over producinng? We kind of already do that in the US. Do you legislate that any producer must have primary buyers as well as secondary/tertiary buyers lined up to ensure never wasting the product? Do you legislate that any one farmer is only allowed to produce X amount of whatever, or state that only X amount of product can be produced annually in total, so put you bids in now for a stake? Do you take the farmer for any crop that is destroyed to discourage over production? Or you can do a startup to disrupt farming with a way to preserve food so it never spoils (a la Twinkies). Good luck selling that product.

Judging by the naïveté of this comment, I don’t think you’ve ever been involved in agriculture at scale. Preventing excess production is extremely difficult.

I thought the milk destruction during the pandemic happened because the processing facilities for the milk were closed and there was no way otherwise to use the raw milk? I.e. we can't stop producing it, because cows need to be milked, but raw milk is useless without further processing.

And most of us are very happy to support supply management! "Cartel" has very negative connotations.

The issues in this article are also entirely different.

edit: you forgot to mention our nefarious healthcare cartel!

> And most of us are very happy to support supply management! "Cartel" has very negative connotations.

Exactly. Having a stable supply of food is more important than having an economically efficient supply of food. Of all industries, the food industry in particular should not be left totally up to market whims.

>Exactly. Having a stable supply of food is more important than having an economically efficient supply of food.

Has there any empirical studies/evidence that supports this claim?

> Of all industries, the food industry in particular should not be left totally up to market whims.

The oil industry seems pretty important as well. After all, most of our vehicles run on it. Maybe we should be glad that OPEC is engaging in "supply management", so they're not "left totally up to market whims"!

> The oil industry seems pretty important as well.

Not nearly as important as food; the only thing as important as the food supply is our supply of drinking water. Nothing else is comparably important, so you're wasting your time trying to find analogies. And the instability historically see in the oil industry is precisely what sane people want to avoid in the food supply.

>Not nearly as important as food; the only thing as important as the food supply is our supply of drinking water. Nothing else is comparably important, so you're wasting your time trying to find analogies.

Guess what modern agriculture (tractors, fertilizers, pesticides) runs off of?

Furthermore, if food security really is important, why is only dairy and egg supply managed? Surely if you want to keep your country fed, you'd want to go after the staples like potatoes or grain? If all the milk cows and egg laying chickens vanished, people would have to change their eating habits. Some people (working in adjacent industries) might lose their jobs, but that'd be it. On the other hand, if all the wheat/soybean/corn/rice/potato crops vanished there would be a massive famine.

> Surely if you want to keep your country fed, you'd want to go after the staples like potatoes or grain?

Canada is extremely competitive on grain and potatoes (and lentils and oilseeds and ...). Supply management isn't needed if we're already competitive exporters of a given product.

>Supply management isn't needed if we're already competitive exporters of a given product.

sounds more like the real goal is protectionism rather than "having a stable supply of food"

Yes, protecting important food suppliers from some foreign competition to ensure a stable supply of food is protectionism.

And again, you’re being needlessly argumentative and couching it all in very poor communications skills. Your comments have had absolutely no value. Please stop - it’s low brow and boring.

You are being very unkind.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The way you constantly point out their (possibly ESL) grammar is seriously bad vibes. We can all understand them just fine.

Supporting the entire food industry keeps the entire food supply secure. Shortages in one sector will raise prices in another. Libertarian madness is not a sensible way to run a country. Not even America is that crazy.

> Has there any empirical studies/evidence that supports this claim?

Two things:

1.) This grammar is atrocious.

2.) You’re being needlessly argumentative.

>And most of us are very happy to support supply management

Is it? This poll seems to say otherwise: https://angusreid.org/supply-management-nafta-renegotiation/

That poll says 74% of canadians either don't want supply management changed during nafta renegotiations, or it could be changed but only as a last resort? That sounds like pretty high support.

edit: The later questions are misleading - they ask if people would rather buy supply managed dairy at 2.25/L or no-supply-managed dairy at 1.50/L. Meanwhile I go to the grocery store and buy supply managed dairy at 1.23/L every week. Pointing out that people would buy a cheaper product isn't really groundbreaking research...

>That sounds like pretty high support.

That's one way of spinning it. The other replies paint a different picture. Specifically:

1. https://i0.wp.com/angusreid.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/S... most people prefer the non-supply managed products, taking into account the pros/cons. (emphasis mine)

2. https://i1.wp.com/angusreid.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/S... only ~40% "support" it, so concluding that "most of us are very happy to support supply management" is a stretch.

> most people prefer the non-supply managed products, taking into account the pros/cons.

I don't think they pros/cons they listed (i.e. price differences) are reflective of reality. Specifically, they list milk as $2.25/L, citing statscan as a source. This is $9 per 4L bag, an absurd price outside of the Territories. Reviewing the actual statscan data source [1], milk prices have been very stable at $1.25 to $1.37 per liter as long as they're been recording data. So I don't know where $2.25 came from. The second source they listed is crowdsourced and refers to milk costs as $0.62 per 0.25L which might be accurate if you're buying a 250ml or 500ml carton with your lunch ... but not if you're buying a larger quantity to take home (and to make useful economic comparisons with).

> only ~40% "support" it, so concluding that "most of us are very happy to support supply management" is a stretch.

That's firmly in Majority territory when it comes to Canadian politics :). There's a reason even the conservative party (the only political affiliation with more people opposed to supply management than supporting it) will not touch the issue.

The most interesting data in that study was the age-based breakdown - younger respondents were much more likely to support supply management, apparently.

[1] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=181000...

>I don't think they pros/cons they listed (i.e. price differences) are reflective of reality

What makes you think the pros/cons they listed are just the price? In the linked questionnaire they have:

Supporters of the system say it ensures high quality, safe products and a secure level of profit for farmers who, in turn, don’t have to worry about changing world market prices.

Opponents say it restricts choices and increases prices for Canadian consumers.According to some estimates, Canadians pay 1.5 to three times what they would without supply management for these goods.Opponents also say that while the system once protected more than 150,000 farmers in the 1970’s,it now protects only about 17,000, suggesting it is less necessary or outdated

That seems to line up with the arguments for/against supply management discussed in this thread.

>Reviewing the actual statscan data source [1], milk prices have been very stable at $1.25 to $1.37 per liter as long as they're been recording data. So I don't know where $2.25 came from.

The article was dated August 2, 2017. If we checked the archived page as of jun 17, 2017, we see the $2.33/L price figure.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170617054025/http://www.statca...

As for whether the numbers are representative because people buy in bulk: does it matter? The hypothetical non-supply managed prices were obtained by taking the current price and dividing by 3 (which was the suggested price premium according to University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy), so it doesn't really matter which starting price you used.

>That's firmly in Majority territory when it comes to Canadian politics :).

1. this is a sneaky moving of the goalposts from "most" to "majority"

2. Maybe en-CA has a different definition for "majority", but the definition on wiktionary unambiguously states that it has to be greater than 50%. maybe you're looking for "plurality"?

3. even if we use "plurality", using that to paint the picture that the policy has widespread support is misleading, especially when it's split pretty close 3 ways. At best it can be called "mixed".

>There's a reason even the conservative party (the only political affiliation with more people opposed to supply management than supporting it) will not touch the issue.

I don't get it. Why arbitrarily exclude people of a certain political affiliation? You can't say "most people disapprove of biden", then backtrack and say that it's true because you excluded all the democrats.

Alright, lot of comments to respond here, I'll do my best.

> What makes you think the pros/cons they listed are just the price?

I think that because consumers (myself included) will always choose a commodity that costs one third less. The description of the differences is irrelevant.

> The article was dated August 2, 2017. If we checked the archived page as of jun 17, 2017, we see the $2.33/L price figure

Interesting. I don't think that's a relevant price, as people who buy milk generally do it in a 2L or 4L package. I'm glad statscan is now tracking more relevant data.

The price listed in their question as "no supply management $1.50/L" lines up pretty close with actual market costs for a 2L or 4L package of milk, while the other one is enough of a price premium to be absurd for what shoppers consider a staple.

> The hypothetical non-supply managed prices were obtained by taking the current price and dividing by 3 (which was the suggested price premium according to University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy)

It matters because the non-supply-managed-price matches the actual market cost for supply-managed milk. That said, if the question had used $1.25/L and $0.83, the survey respondents still would've selected the cheaper one. Run the same question again and ask if consumers would prefer $1.25/L Canadian milk or $0.83/L American milk and I think you'd get a response more accurate of both what the outcome will be and what the consumers' opinion is.

Interestingly, reading the original report from the UofC [1], they used the 1Litre price and applied a "typical" 2.7 cost multiplier to get an estimate of the 4L price (at 6.02-6.48 for 2010-2012), and compared it with the real 3.8litre price from US Bureau of Labour statistics. The earliest statscan data currently available (from 2015) shows it at $5.52 and slowly steadily increasing to $6.05 in June this year. So their estimated cost differential is off by 10-15% right off the bat due to lack of data and a poor assumption. The paper also picks and chooses whether to compare supply-managed sectors to other agricultural sectors in Canada, or to the equivalent sector (eg dairy) in other countries - I don't find this to be rigourous. They quote the "mere" 12,786 dairy farmers in Canada - without comparing it to the size of dairy industries in comparable countries. Eg the US is down to ~30k dairy farms. I got a bit bored of skimming it to be honest, but I didn't find it to have even attempted to remain unbiased.

> 1. this is a sneaky moving of the goalposts from "most" to "majority"

It wasn't sneaky. That's why I put a smiley-face. It was somewhat satirical moving of the goalposts.

> 2. Maybe en-CA has a different definition for "majority", but the definition on wiktionary unambiguously states that it has to be greater than 50%. maybe you're looking for "plurality"?

Sure, plurality. I wasn't being too precise.

> 3. even if we use "plurality", using that to paint the picture that the policy has widespread support is misleading, especially when it's split pretty close 3 ways. At best it can be called "mixed".

Ok

> I don't get it. Why arbitrarily exclude people of a certain political affiliation?

I wasn't excluding them. I was explicitly including them. Read it again without the parenthetical clause. The equivalent statement would be "most [a plurality of] people disapprove of Biden, even including democrats"

To further expound on my position: I don't believe that supply management is perfect by any means. I think particularly the price of quota is too high, and this has a chilling effect on new entrants and novel ideas. I don't believe the solution is to remove quota, but other options are possible (eg have quota only available to buy from and sell to the relevant board to prevent profiteering on quota sales, or maybe have farmers require to "lease" quota annually, or maybe increase maximum herd/flock exemption limits (particularly notable with laying hens) to allow new entrants with novel ideas to compete on a small/local basis, maybe tie some fees to carbon reduction/addressing climate change, maybe provide tariff exemptions/reductions for novel products not available on the Canadian market). All that said, protection of the domestic industry for certain staples is worthwhile, and doing it with supply management rather than taxpayer subsidies is a lot more fair in my opinion.

[1] https://www.policyschool.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/suppl...

Maple syrup too! https://www.vpr.org/vpr-news/2018-03-08/quebecs-legal-maple-...

Don't mess with those guys.

Onions too. They used some trade negotiations to put a northeast US farmers out of business for certain onions, which now sell for retail at less than production price.

You're misreading. They're not being ordered to destroy crops in order to support the medical marijuana price. They're destroying crops because there was a bubble and they've created way too much supply.

Cannabis stocks were a fad for a while, and I know lots of people who invested in them blindly. The number of legal cannabis retailers is exploding. I live in a mid sized town and there are three more opening this month, and the ones I see always have customers.

The system's hardly failing, some speculators just played themselves.

> they're not being ordered to destroy crops in order to support the medical marijuana price.

I didn't say, or suggest, that anyone was ordered to destroy crops?

They created too much supply, yes. Follow the logic chain out a step. If they wanted to sell it, they could lower the price...

Instead they _choose_ to keep the price above the black market price. The black market price which is already inflated far above production cost, by virtue of it being illegal.

Legalization in Canada has dropped unregulated prizes. An 1/8oz (3.5G) pre legalization could fetch $30-$40. Post legalization is maxed at $25. This might not seem like much, but as the weight goes up, it gets drastically cheaper.

You seem to be assuming that the producer/grower and retailer are the same company. There are often disconnects in supply chains like this where someone is hemorrhaging money while others in the chain are doing quite well. And besides if your production costs are high there's a point where lowering the price no longer helps. eg. the cost to package it for retail distribution just adds more even more loss.

TFA references a huge amount of already packaged bud and produced and packaged edibles included in that billion grams.

Unless you’re a cartel trying to price fix for long term gain, selling this stuff at >$0 is a win.

> Follow the logic chain out a step. If they wanted to sell it, they could lower the price...

This is not true about the Canadian market for a couple of reasons. The majority of this overstock cannabis is unpackaged. Unpackaged cannabis cannot be sold outside of licensed producers -> licensed processors.