Economic losses due to decreased milk production, mortality and early removal from the herd were estimated at US$950 per clinically affected cow for a total cost of approximately US$737,500 for just the one herd the team studied. This did not include any ongoing herd dynamics or reproductive losses for this herd.

In the paper, titled “The impact of influenza A H5N1 virus infection in dairy cows,” published in Nature Communications, the researchers said they found cows clinically infected with HPAI presented a significantly increased risk of death and of premature removal from a herd of 3,876 adult cows in Ohio.

The most remarkable finding was the long duration of diminished milk production in clinically affected cows, said co-author Diego Diel, professor of virology and director of the Virology Laboratory at the Animal Health Diagnostic Center.

He says pasteurization efficiently inactivates the virus, rendering the milk safe for human consumption, but that a diminution in milk production presents an enormous financial burden to the producers of affected farms, and if added up to all affected farms, it is causing major economic losses to the United States’ 9.3 million-cow dairy industry.

“This represents a shock to production costs if you are affected by an outbreak,” said Matthew MacLachlan, co-author and assistant professor. “For a clinically diagnosed cow, we found an average of $950 in costs, which includes the milk you expect to lose over 60 days and the possible cost of removing them from dairy production. Even if they recover, that’s going to cost a dairy farmer $367 on average in milk losses.”

“One key strategy is implementing biosecurity measures to minimize these outbreaks, and the next step is developing vaccines,” said Felipe Peña Mosca, who was first author on the paper.

It’s a thorny problem, Diel said, because ordinarily mastitis is prevented through increased disinfection. In this particular case, those practices used for disinfection — pre-milking teat cleaning with a germicidal solution that is then toweled off — could be introducing the virus to the next cow. Study results suggest an association between cumulative exposure to the milking process and the risk of clinical disease, meaning the introduction of the virus could be during the milking process itself.

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David Hudson of IMI International, a global consumer tracking company, says there’s growing support for Canadian dairy products – even above the lofty levels of support of the past 10 years.

“Cutting through the noise, there is a lot of love for Canadian dairy farmers,” he said at the recent Dairy Business Summit put on by the Canadian Dairy XPO in Stratford on April 1.

The overall sentiment towards dairy farmers in Canada has risen from 74 per cent very positive or somewhat positive in January to 81 per cent very positive or somewhat positive in March.

He says the positive sentiment is expressed across all age demographics.

Support for dairy farmers isn’t new and has been high for the almost 10 years the company has been tracking it in Canada. What’s different is the increases in the past few months.

Hudson also showed numbers that illustrated growth in people’s intent to purchase Canadian products. A recent survey showed that 34 per cent of Americans purchased products because they were made in the U.S.A., whereas Canadians’ purchase of Canadian products jumped 11 per cent in a week to 63 per cent. Hudson says he expects the next survey will show Canadians’ commitment to Canadian products will jump to 80 per cent.

Opportunities with new Canadians

There were close to 500,000 new immigrants arriving in Canada in 2024, which represents new market opportunities, says Hudson. The federal government has since lowered the number of immigrants coming in the future, but those who are now here are committed to using dairy products.

New immigrants from parts of Asia are more committed to cooking with dairy than other Canadians, but Hudson said to make sure to give them the dairy products they are used to, along with introducing them to new ones.

That follows the trend seen by Quality Cheese, where they are making more paneer, a cooking cheese popular in India. Albert Borgo, said at the dairy business summit that the company he owns with his brothers is working on more ethnic dairy products, as the company expands capacity at its Orangeville plant.

He says there’s real interest in higher protein products in the marketplace and some people are getting that from dairy products.

New immigrants are more interested in quality than quantity and aren’t as focused on price as other Canadians, says Hudson.

“The freshness of dairy is likely to resonate with newcomers,” he says.

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“It has been a volatile few years for dairy producers, but 2024 is shaping up to be calmer — a return to a more normal environment, if you will,” FCC senior economist Graeme Crosbie said in a Feb. 7 FCC report.

Between increased production and slightly higher farm gate prices, “total farm cash receipts for the dairy sector are forecast to increase 3.7 per cent this year” nationwide, and continued strong culled cow/bull calf prices in 2024 will provide an additional boost to farm profitability.

Why it matters: Elevated input costs and rising interest rates were the main factors behind shrinking dairy farm margins in 2023. Producers across the country hope for some relief in 2024.

FCC hosted its annual economic outlook panel presentation in Montreal Jan. 23, with director of industry relations Darlene McBain serving as moderator. In that session, chief economist J.P. Gervais tackled the dairy sector.

“Margins were under pressure last year,” he said, adding that rising interest rates were part of the reason. “A lot of dairy operations had to make investments and had to renew loans at much higher interest rates than maybe three or four or five years ago.”

But the biggest driver in suppressing 2023 margins was feed costs. Gervais showed a graph tracking dairy feed costs in Canada, with peaks in mid-2022 and early 2023, but declines since then.

FCC predicts dairy feed costs will drop almost to 2020 levels in early to mid-2024, rise again to 2021 levels in the fall, then decline again.

As a result, Gervais said, “those margins in 2024 could look a little bit like they were in 2019 …. Margins are going to improve but they’re still going to be tight.”

Crosbie pointed to the situation south of the border as evidence that feed cost stresses should ease over the next year.

“A record U.S. corn crop in 2023 sent corn prices tumbling to a three-year low, easing the burden on (dairy) producer feed costs, particularly in the east,” he wrote.

Gervais noted that on many dairy farms, “a plus or minus 10 per cent change in feed costs can lead to a plus or minus 40 per cent change in net profitability.”

Keeping a keen eye on feed efficiency and ingredient costs will remain important.

“Any operation that is able to … working with suppliers, gain a two to three per cent efficiency in their costs – working through rations and so forth – would gain a lot.”

McBain said inflation and interest rates were top issues in 2023 across all of Canadian agriculture.

Dairy producers who are challenged by the cost of borrowing may find limited relief on the horizon and will be watching butter stocks and prices for cull cows and bull calves.

“Butter stocks are higher than they were at this time last year but are still low relative to recent history,” Crosbie observed.

“Low butter stocks leave little room for error (by milk allocation agencies) should production not meet anticipated demand and will be a key reason why more incentive day announcements may be forthcoming for P5 producers.”

With beef markets high, cull cows and bull calves represented an unexpectedly significant source of income on many dairy farms in 2023. According to more than one recent outlook, this should continue in 2024.

Drought in Western Canada hasn’t allowed Prairie beef producers to take as much advantage of decreasing feed costs, leaving them unable to fill demand for animals. Some of the gap can be filled by calves from dairy farms.

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Henry Holtmann, who is both WMP chair and heads the board of the Dairy Farmers of Manitoba, said expanded processor capacity has a cascading effect, even if it is two provinces away.

“Since we share all the revenues as a pool and we share the markets, if processor expansion in another province results in growth in another province, that grows the Western Milk Pool pie, and we all have part of that pie,” he said.

Why it matters: Once built, Dairy Innovation West will be the first facility of its kind in Canada. It will also be the first major capital project built by the Western Milk Pool.

The $70-million Dairy Innovation West facility is gaining momentum after breaking ground last August.

“We have shovels in the ground as of now, pilings in and we’re getting ready as winter approaches,” the pool’s CEO Nolan Berg said at a December dairy conference in Winnipeg. “We’re getting that all set up so that we are in a great position to move forward in spring.”

Construction is expected to be completed by the end of 2024 and, after a window to test the equipment, the facility should be up and running by mid-2025.

Project roots

The project was first announced in 2019 as part of a commitment for pool members to work more closely together and expand processing capacity. At the time, it was estimated to be complete by March 2021.

Some of those delays can be chalked up to the pandemic, but Holtmann said the biggest challenges were regulatory.

The WMP is not a legal entity and therefore cannot own the facility. Instead, Dairy Innovation West is co-owned by the provincial organizations that make up the pool. That opens the door to a patchwork of provincial rules.

“The biggest hurdle was finding a way that would respect the provincial regulations of the four provinces,” Holtmann said. Those nuances were tougher to navigate than the board initially expected.

“It’s been an interesting path because, as soon as we thought we had something that would work, we would test the waters, and then a provincial lawyer says, ‘no, you can’t do it that way,’ so we would have to adjust and change,” said Holtmann. “So, it takes time to do that.”

One of the regulatory challenges stemmed from B.C. Milk Marketing Board regulations, which don’t permit it to be involved. The WMP is made up of five dairy groups across four western Canadian provinces: the B.C. Milk Marketing Board, the B.C. Dairy Association, Alberta Milk, SaskMilk, and Dairy Farmers of Manitoba.

“They have a different structure in British Columbia; they have two organizations,” Holtmann said. “One is their marketing board. The other is their producer association. We found that we could work through their producer association, and that worked just fine.”

The central-Alberta location near Blackfalds was chosen to address the need for more dairy processing in Alberta. There is not enough capacity to accommodate the volumes of milk produced in the province, and milk sometimes goes to Abbotsford, B.C., or even as far as Manitoba to be processed.

Dairy farmers cover the transportation costs to get milk to the door of the processor, so longer journeys can reduce farm profitability.

Dairy Innovation West is meant to form a bridge between the farm and those distant plants. Milk coming into the facility from member farms will be concentrated, making it easier to ship to end-use processors. The milk concentrates from the facility are not owned by the WMP.

Depending on the process, the facility could take milk from as many as four trucks and concentrate it to one truckload.

“It really supports processor expansion and reduces transportation costs for the farmers to get the milk to the door of that processor,” said Holtmann.

The facility will use reverse osmosis (RO) and ultrafiltration (UF) to make RO concentrated whole milk, RO concentrated skim milk, UF whole and skim milk, milk protein isolate concentrates, milk permeate concentrate and cream.

“RO is really dewatering the milk. Ultrafiltration actually can concentrate the protein fractions, which is important for cheesemaking,” Holtmann said, adding that the facility will be able to “concentrate about 300 million litres of raw product into its various components per year.”

Dairy producer Gerrit Haarman, owner of Coulee View Farms north of Lethbridge, Alta., said the project is a win-win from both a cost and environmental perspective.

“Any time there’s less trucks on the road, that should translate into a saving,” he said.

“From my point of view, the environmental advantage is something that I really think will benefit us just by having less trucks transporting milk.”

It also portrays the western Canadian dairy industry in a positive light.

“I just think it’s a fantastic project that shows producers in Western Canada being able to come together and find a solution for a problem that affects all of us dairy producers in Western Canada. I think that just shows great potential.”

– With files from Jeff Melchior

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During Lactanet’s open industry session earlier this fall, chief services officer Brian Van Doormaal gave a presentation entitled “Modernizing LPI (Lifetime Performance Index)” and later said he had enough positive feedback to begin a process that could take up to two years.

Why it matters: Many dairy producers use the Lifetime Performance Index as part of a strategy for breeding high-quality cows.

Van Doormaal was among the leadership of the Canadian Dairy Network (one of Lactanet’s predecessor organizations) when it introduced LPI in 1991. He said it initially combined the effects of genetic traits in three categories: milk production, durability and health/fertility.

The goal was to allow breeders to predict production performance of future daughters throughout their lifetimes.

In 2001, the Canadian Dairy Network introduced additional longevity, durability, fertility and health traits. Even more recently, Lactanet launched its feed efficiency predictive tool and added its effects into LPI. Now it has a methane efficiency tool that could also be tied to lifetime production parameters.

Potential introduction of methane efficiency into the index was one reason Lactanet’s Genetic Evaluation Board (GEB) began contemplating an LPI modernization, Van Doormaal said.

“The GEB did not want to … add another number on the end of it to bring in methane efficiency, as had been done with feed efficiency.”

It’s also possible the GEB could request incorporation of more traits related to disease resistance and health, and these could be added at the same time as other changes.

“When we started LPI, this formula [was] very simple to use and simple to interpret,” Van Doormaal noted. Now, “we’re getting a more diverse LPI formula with multiple groups of traits involved in it.”

The provision of LPI predictions requires 40 data points on production and 20 on type traits, with possibly more to come.

The formula for the current LPI is available on the Lactanet website, added Van Doormaal, but “there’s no way that anybody knows or memorizes those numbers, including myself.”

Besides making it less complicated, a secondary goal is to eliminate the mathematical nature of the formula.

Van Doormaal admits that came from his own direction more than 30 years ago, but he recognizes it is not the most preferred form of communication about genetic information. He noted that, under the current system, the final rating for an animal has no definitive meaning. If one cow is rated 100 points higher than another, there’s no quantifiable way to confirm it.

“This is despite the numerical formula.”

This sets the LPI apart from Lactanet’s separate Pro$ genetic index, which targets a cow’s lifetime “profitability.” If an animal scores five points higher than a herdmate on the Pro$ scale, said Van Doormaal, it will – theoretically at least – earn $5 more in its lifetime than its herdmate.

He said the LPI has never been strictly about profitability. It’s about cow performance and doesn’t reflect costs related to barn management or feed.

“We’re not guaranteeing that … the way the [traits in the formula] combine into the LPI reflect the optimum economics,” he said.

“Often, it would be used as a starting point but not as a finishing point” for maximizing profit.

Part of the mathematics involve attributing a relative weight to each trait as it affects LPI. But Lactanet geneticists believe they can accomplish this in a non-mathematical way by establishing several subgroups of traits that affect a particular factor.

These factors, tentatively, are production, longevity, health and welfare, reproduction, milkability and sustainability.

The production sub-index would take in milk yield and conformation traits, health and welfare would take in disease resistance traits, reproduction would include daughter fertility and daughter calving ability, and milkability would take in milking speed, temperament, udder depth and teat placement.

Some of these sub-indexes could include traits that aren’t in the current LPI formula but are strongly co-related to other traits in the formula. It’s possible these would be listed as correlating traits in an updated LPI approach.

It’s proposed that each animal would be given a percentile rank among the breed for each sub-index.

Some breeds will not have all the sub-indices. Given that feed efficiency and methane efficiency genetic indices have only been completed for the Holstein breed so far, it’s likely the sustainability sub-index will be absent for other breeds from an updated LPI system.

If the GEB makes recommendations to Lactanet’s board of directors in December about modernizing the LPI, Van Doormaal expects it wouldn’t be implemented until 2025 or later.

– Stew Slater is a contributor to Farmtario.

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Gabriel Dallago has joined the Department of Animal Science as an assistant professor in digital livestock production.

Dallago describes his research as being somewhere between animal and computer sciences. “What I do fits within that whole idea of collecting data on the farm, analyzing that data, and bringing the results back to the farmer in a way that they can use that information to better make decisions,” he said. To date, most of his research has focused on dairy cows.

Why it matters: Careful combing of production data can help farmers make more informed livestock management decisions.

Dallago has a PhD in animal science from Montreal’s McGill University. He also holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Federal University of Jequitinhonha and Mucuri Valleys in Diamantina, Minas Gerais, Brazil, where he grew up.

When he saw the job posting, Dallago thought the position sounded like the perfect fit.

“It’s really aligned with what I’m interested in doing and my academic training,” he said. “I believe it’s where the industry is heading. There’s been a lot of development on that front.”

To better explain the type of work he does, Dallago described a recent project in collaboration with the dairy herd improvement organization, Lactanet.

In a nutshell, they were looking at management practices around the transition period in cows, from pregnancy to milk production.

“There are a lot of hormonal and physiological changes that happen (during transition). We need to make sure the management practices that we are adopting are as good as they can be, so the animal has a good transition,” he said.

After running multiple tests with multiple management practices and tracking the data, a picture began to emerge about which practices promote and which practices restrict milk production. When enough data is gathered, predictions can be made.

“We can use those predictions and the management practices associated with each prediction to provide guidelines tailored to each animal individually,” he said.

Essentially, the idea is to help farmers make more targeted and informed management decisions.

“If you make those decisions efficiently, you’re optimizing your system and not wasting resources.”

Dallago said he’s looking forward to working with local farmers.

“That’s something that I’ve done in the past too, especially when I was doing my undergrad and my master’s training back in my home country.”

He comes from a family of farmers, so there’s a familiarity there as well.

“I think it’s very important to make the connection with the people that we’re doing research for. We hope that our research will help them. I think it’s very important to make that link and keep a conversation open.”

He started the position at the beginning of March, so outreach work will wait awhile.

“I’m just getting my research going now, but that’s definitely something I’m very much looking forward to doing,” he said.

Dallago will also be teaching a graduate-level statistics course at the university, another aspect of the job he’s looking forward to. He rejects the notion that learning is a one-way street where professors teach and students absorb.

“It’s actually kind of a two-way avenue,” he said. “As you’re teaching students, you also learn a lot from the students.”

Dallago arrived in Winnipeg three days ahead of his start date, on Feb. 23. While he’d experienced Canadian winters while studying in Montreal, it was still a shock to experience the tail end of a Winnipeg winter.

“I came for the interview in July last year, so it was pretty much middle summer, and then I came back on Feb. 27. It was a big change in landscape.”

However, the terrain is somewhat familiar.

“It reminds me a lot of where I grew up back in Brazil,” he said. “It was also very flat in the city where I’m from. It’s a very agricultural area with lots of farms.”

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That video has now been viewed by almost 3 million people. It shocked many Canadians, who were wondering why this is even possible when food prices are skyrocketing at the grocery store.

The dairy industry has its reasons. Supply management allows 9,500 dairy farmers to produce what we need as a country. The system is highly protected with import tariffs, and the Canadian Dairy Commission sets an appropriate price for farm milk, so farmers can make a decent living.

But dairy cows cannot magically start and stop making milk and butter fat. It just doesn’t work that way. So, most farmers will overshoot to hit their quota. Feed, the weather, and many other factors influence milk production – most Canadians can appreciate that.

Based on rough estimates, it is believed Canadian dairy farmers can dump up to 300 million litres a year in Canada. We asked the Canadian Dairy Commission for exact figures on the amount of milk dumped, and they could not say, which is a problem in and of itself. Since the dairy industry is self-regulated but highly protected by public policy, the Commission, a crown corporation, ought to know. But transparency is hardly the dairy sector’s strong point.

In Ontario, an amendment to ‘By-Laws for Marketing Boards’ under the Milk Act was made last fall, allowing the Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO) to “list and maintain the confidentiality of commercially sensitive DFO board documents.” Similar rules affect other dairy boards across the country. The DFO did disclose the amount of wasted farm milk prior to 2022. Moving forward, that is highly unlikely to happen again.

Now, as usual, dairy advocates were quick to go on the defensive, in an attempt to trivialize the issue of milk waste on the farm. The Dairy Farmers of Canada are always ready to send marching orders to those affiliated with Canada’s dairy practices. Their message always implies supporting the status quo, without saying so directly. They did the same with the “Buttergate” scandal in 2021 when it was disclosed that dairy farmers were using palm oil derivatives to feed cows, making butter harder. And they are doing it again, normalizing what is seen as completely unacceptable for Canadian consumers and taxpayers.

Milk dumping remains a highly taboo subject matter within the industry which is why dairy boards do everything they possibly can to silence people and make embarrassing stories go away. It shows the true dark side of supply management, the system farmers care very much about.

What is being missed in this debate is how supply management can actually eliminate all waste as the quota system can be used to our own advantage. Producing food only to destroy it makes no sense, especially with looming emission targets. Most dairy farmers around the world do discard milk occasionally. But Canada has the perfect system in place to eliminate all waste.

Firstly, we need to make milk dumping illegal. This policy shift will provide an incentive for farmers to adjust. Right now, dumping is the easiest thing to do. Making it illegal would force marketing boards to find a market for the surplus.

Secondly, the CDC should create a strategic reserve for milk, or powdered milk. Most Canadians aren’t aware that we already have a strategic reserve for butter, which includes over 85,000 kilos. Such a buffer could help between processing and shipping to markets abroad. And finally, we need processing plants.

Canadian dairy farmers have often argued that we can’t ship Canadian milk abroad, that is until China decided to build its own plant in Kingston Ontario, called Canadian Royal Milk. That’s right, Ontario dairy farmers are supplying this Chinese-owned plant to produce baby formula, and all its products are shipped to China. We can certainly do this ourselves. All we need is to create an incentive for change.

Change for the better is possible. The first step in fixing a problem is to recognize that we have one. Meanwhile though, many dairy advocates and academics will continue to normalize the issue of milk dumping by calling farmers like Jerry Huigen incompetent, foolish, and irresponsible. We also have zero publicly available data about farm milk waste, as we continue to pay more for milk and dairy products at the grocery store.

Huigen, with his 43 years of experience as a dairy farmer, has now delivered what Canadians deserve from the industry. Courage, transparency, accountability.

This is what we need, now more than ever so we make supply management work for farmers and Canadians.

– Sylvain Charlebois is professor of food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University as senior director at the Agri-Food Analytics Lab.

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The world’s biggest dairy exporter said it now expects to earn between 45 and 60 New Zealand cents per share in the financial year ending July 2023, compared with an earlier estimate of 30 to 45 cents.

[Comment] Synthetic milk not like the udders

A sustained period of favourable pricing for its protein and cheese portfolios, as well as whole milk powder, is the main driver behind the earnings guidance boost, said Fonterra Chief Executive Officer Miles Hurrell.

“If these unprecedented conditions were to continue for a further extended period, this could have an additional positive impact on forecast earnings,” he added.

Fonterra on Sept. 22 is expected to report fiscal 2022 earnings at the top end of its guidance range of 25 to 35 cents per share, compared with 34 cents in 2021.

The Auckland-based firm lowered its milk collections forecast for the 2022-23 season to 1,495 million kilograms of milk solids from 1,510 million, as adverse weather conditions in parts of the country affected collection and resulted in a slow start to the season.

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It is the highest increase since the CDC was created in 1967. Provincial boards will need to approve these increases but that will likely not be a problem. For consumers, this is certainly not great news. Milk, butter, and yogurt prices will likely skyrocket in the new year.

Canadian industrial milk was already the most expensive in the world, has been for many years. The Canadian Dairy Commission is the centrepiece of our supply management system for dairy. In Canada, we produce what we need, and dairy farmers get a fair price for their work. Sounds reasonable. Only a privileged few can produce milk in Canada, making milk itself almost a public good.

Most people are willing to pay extra for good Canadian milk and dairy products. Even without supply management and our quota system, milk prices would likely still be high, perhaps even higher, but it is sensible to believe Canadians still want domestic quality.

But in recent months, Canadians have seen that quality may not always be there.

“Buttergate,” which shone light on the practice of feeding cows with palmite, a palm oil derivative coming from other parts of the world, affecting our butter’s hardness, made many Canadians scratch their heads. Why would we import an ingredient from abroad to produce butterfat when the Blue Cow brand is all about local, thus compromising quality?

The Dairy Farmers of Canada banned the practice in the spring and created a working group to investigate the matter. So far, the group has not released a single report about its progress and new quality assurance practices the industry is pursuing at retail. Not one hint of transparency to reassure Canadians.

With this latest increase, raising farm gate prices for milk so farmers can make a decent living is not really the issue. What’s problematic is the way the CDC does it. The Crown corporation, owned by all Canadians, is controlled by three people, all with dairy connections.

Processors, retailers and, most importantly, consumers are not even represented on the board. To be clear, the 72 people working for the CDC in Ottawa are working for the Canadian public, not dairy farmers. We set dairy prices, not farmers themselves as supply management is a regime owned by all Canadians.

However, 91 per cent of the Canadian public doesn’t even know the CDC exists and how the commission operates even though its decisions impact the lives of most Canadians. Again, the CDC has not shown any interest in being transparent and forthcoming with information. The CDC’s press release about the record-breaking price hikes, posted on late Friday afternoon, was never shared by the Crown corporation, but by citizens on social media.

The other concern many observers have are methods used to calculate these increases. The CDC posted a very simple seven-page report which explains how it calculated the increase. Not only is raw data not provided, but we have no idea if data used in the pricing formula is verified by competent authorities.

From what we know, all the data is self-reported by a group of randomly selected dairy farmers, so the report states. The sophistication of these reports is worthy of the work of a young university student at best. All reports are worded the same, every year, with a few exceptions. Numbers do change, but that would be the extent of it.

Higher milk prices won’t be good news for consumers, but it won’t be good for the dairy industry either. With this decision, we’re expecting more illegal milk from the United States to enter the Canadian market, as was the case a few years ago with diafiltered milk.

Goat milk and other alternatives on the market will become more financially attractive as prices for milk and dairy products continue to rise. But dairy farmers won’t care. Most will cash out and exit the industry while others continue to do well under a regime which guarantees them revenue.

Great for them, but we’re on pace to lose half of our dairy farms in Canada by 2030. We could have fewer than 5,000 farms within the next decade. If that’s what Canadians want, fine.

But if we want to really help our dairy industry, a good starting point would be to reform the CDC and address its questionable governance and opaque processes.

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The Liberal government, most recently in its Sept. 23 speech from the throne, has told Dairy Farmers of Canada (DFC) compensation is coming for three major trade deals: the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).

“There were some hints at something coming, but we have heard nothing,” DFC vice-president David Wiens said at an Oct. 10 press conference. “We’re concerned because a lot of the time, there are these kinds of commitments that are spoken to but there is no action and that’s causing a lot of concern in the dairy community.”

Prior to the 2019 election, a $345 million payment was made to the industry, which carries a heavy influence in Quebec politics. That money was part of the federal government’s commitment to pay the industry $1.75 billion over eight years for giving away market share during CETA and CPTPP talks.

By 2024, roughly 18 per cent of the domestic milk production market will have been sacrificed to recent trade negotiations, according to DFC.

Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau is non-committal on providing any more timelines, particularly as to when compensation could be coming for CUSMA, the successor pact to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

“During the new NAFTA negotiations, we protected supply management from American efforts to dismantle it. We are delivering on our commitment to full and fair compensation and we will do the same thing now that the new NAFTA has been ratified,” Bibeau said in a statement.

Now dairy farmers are calling on the government to provide a schedule of payments for the balance of the compensation owed under CETA and the CPTPP, while also announcing details of the CUSMA compensation.

“We feel that the government had made it very clear that they had already set funds aside, in terms of budget, over the next seven years. At this point in time we feel they really need to come back to honour the commitments that they made to us,” said Wiens.

Bibeau said her government is committed to making another payment before the end of the fiscal year, which differs from the end of the calendar year.

During a media availability with reporters, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recognized many dairy farmers have been hit hard by the pandemic.

“We are right now working with (DFC) and others on compensation for NAFTA. We will continue to make this a priority,” he said.

Wiens said meetings had been held with government, but “we have not heard back from them on what compensation for CUSMA may look like.”

The pandemic has required the federal government to entirely rearrange its budgeting in an attempt to stabilize the economy, which has resulted in billions of dollars in support for industries.

Dairy farmers haven’t been exempted from the support, which included the federal government permanently increasing the borrowing capacity of the Canadian Dairy Commission by $200 million and launching a $50 million food recovery program to buy goods that would otherwise be spoiled.

DFC expressed an understanding of the government’s situation, but also frustration with its decision to ratify CUSMA in the midst of the pandemic and at a time that did not jibe with the dairy year.

“Dairy farmers have not asked for compensation as a result of the pandemic, so just to be very clear, it has had a negative impact on dairy farms, but we believe that our supply management over the long run will always keep us afloat,” Wiens said.

“But at the same time, when part of our markets are being given away to foreign producers, that requires compensation because that is a direct hit on every dairy farm family across the country.”

— D.C. Fraser reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Ottawa.

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