Buttergate: Why are Canadians complaining about hard butter?
bbc.com
bbc.com
They say they maintain "good" prices for both producers and consumers, but the price inflation of cheese and beef has been absurd and cheese has become a luxury good.
What it means is that it is effectively illegal to start a dairy farm or a small scale cheese making operation. There is more enforcement against black market raw milk products than there is against meth dealers. The regulators insist it's to protect people from being poisoned, but it's really to protect the monopoly power and political sway. If you want to get a few cows and start an artisinal cheese business and grow it, you are out of luck. The city administrative classes hate rural people and they create and maintain these "safety" regulations to stamp out the culture. The country is so bland they have effectively succeeded. It's never just about butter. :)
For raw milk, it is illegal in plenty of places (Nordics, Scotland, England requires license, Australia):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_milk#Legal_status
As for supply management, the first question to ask is: does Canada want a domestic dairy industry? If the answer is "yes", then it becomes "how will it be supported?"
Because both the US [0][1] and EU [2] subsidize their dairy farmers out of general tax revenues: tax dollars are being sent to them regardless of whether you drink milk or not (lactose intolerant, vegans).
In Canada's supply management system, dairy prices are higher, but if you're not a dairy consumer, you don't pay anything. The cost of supporting farmers is borne by those who buy the farmers' products.
If we Canadians want "cheap" dairy, we can have it: but let's not fool ourselves that it will not come with some kind of cost.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-02/farmers-a...
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/06/12/best-way-...
[2] https://www.politico.eu/article/eus-milk-scramble-for-africa...
For those not familiar with Canada's crazy system, farmers must own milk quotas in order to be able to sell milk beyond the farm gate, and this is very aggressively enforced. Quota prices are extraordinarily high; currently $24,000 CAD/cow in Ontario and Quebec, $36,500 CAD/cow in BC, up to around $44,000/cow in Alberta. The effect of this is that even opening a small hobby farm is impossible without huge investments (e.g., the upfront cost just to buy just the quotas, not the land or the cows, for a small 100 cow venture in Ontario is $2.4 million).
At one time long ago, this system was billed as protecting the family farm, but in practice now it drives the death of family farms, as people with quotas slowly sell out to large producers and new farmers cannot enter the marketplace because of the quota cost wall.
Cheese quality, price, and availability in Canada is absolutely pathetic compared to any European country, the US, or Australia and New Zealand, and we are usually several years behind on product innovations present in other countries such as ultrafiltered, lactose free, grassfed, and A2 milk.
> The cost of supporting farmers is borne by those who buy the farmers' products.
This should be true of any product, but you don’t need to take out a million dollar loan to purchase the quota from existing producers in order to raise cattle, grow blueberries, or produce sugar beets. All those industries are fine and supported by their consumers.
The EU, US, and AU all subsidize; NZ is not subsidized IIRC.
AFAICT, if you want to get rid of supply management, and have a domestic industry, then we'll have to have subsidies.
> This should be true of any product, but you don’t need to take out a million dollar loan to purchase the quota from existing producers in order to raise cattle, grow blueberries, or produce sugar beets. All those industries are fine and supported by their consumers.
The US is literally dumping milk from overproduction:
* https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/22/politics/pfas-water-chemicals
* https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-dairy-farmers-dump-43-...
What do you think will happen to our (Canadian) farmers if we all US market dumping?
Not all product segments are the same, even with-in the agriculture sector.
If having autarkic dairy production is important for some reason, limiting opportunities for local producers to enter the market is a weird way of achieving it.
That doesn’t address the failure of current policy to encourage or even allow dynamic domestic production of this category of commodities to meet consumer demand.
The government has given no penalties to farmers polluting the environment over the last 20 years, every change in government there's a slow push to have some sort of payment for what's been done, but the it changes again and all progress evaporates. The farmers who originally wreaked havoc on the land are retired now. Putting penalties in place now would just be penalizing their kids, investors or those who joined the farming boom in this country from the 90s.
New Zealand is also a massive hotspot for testing new technology in farms. Speak to any dairy farmer here, they'll likely have some sort of regular cadence with overseas companies (usually Israel or Canada) to discuss product changes, management or updates to software or reporting, etc. But nearly none of the technology innovation happen in the country itself - as soon as development shows promise, it's acquired or relocated somewhere else leaving.
With the price of land in New Zealand reaching all time highs as New Zealand continues to make no progress in reducing the amount of investment in land - I think farming as a profession will continue to push towards intensification just as it has been over the last 20 years. Land is expensive, they need returns to justify the investment. Around, and around we go until the land is a toxic slurry.
[0] https://theconversation.com/polluted-drained-and-drying-out-...
Liberalizing the dairy system is not just about "cheap" dairy either, it's about enabling people to make a relatively independent living outside cities, and provide high quality and diversified products to supply food to their regions. This is what supply management prevents.
Also, the point of a market for something people want is that it doesn't need subsidies or have quotas. There is literally no legitimate benefit the quota system provides that could not be handled by import tariffs instead. That is, to actually enforce borders and markets instead of hollowing them out with globalized and dumped products from countries with abusive labour practices and other corrupt subsidies.
Not only this, but the monopoly has has compromised our political processes to where it manipulates party processes. It's laughably corrupt and is an example of what makes Canada seem like a write-off economy in its other sectors as well.
The economics for maple syrup are a little different. Most maple groves are located on very fertile land that could be converted for agricultural use. If the price of syrup falls too low, it would be tempting to convert that land to farmland.
Now, converting farmland back to a healthy maple grove would take 40+ years (the time it takes for sugar maple to grow to a point where it starts producing sap).
No.
> that is at risk if farmers convert the land for other agricultural use?
Yes. You basically have to let very productive land untouched for 40+ years before you can have a single harvest. At current prices it's not worth it. Once a maple grove is gone, it's gone forever.
Current pricing makes it a viable proposition for farmers to keep their groves.
There are theoretically ways to import butter to Canada, but you need a special license, and there are very strict quotas. Generally, only large dairy corporations can get them, and only to handle major shortage.
In my entire life spent mostly in Canada, I have never seen butter being advertised as being from another country. Cheese, definitely, but never butter.
Even trying to bring some home with you from a vacation isn't allowed. It would be taken if declared at the border, and destroyed. Failure to declare it is a crime.
Why? The Canadian dairy industry is an incredibly powerful lobby group. All they have to do is point to the very low standards in the USA and say "if we let foreign dairy in, we'll be exposing Canadians to that". Liberal governments and Conservative governments alike pander to them endlessly.
I'm LOL'ing just thinking about it.
See what happens at least in Quebec is that we kept the family agriculture model with single family actually owning there farm and a hundred cows. In that context, they can't be competitive with US milk which has megafarms and can mass produce basically any animal product these days.
To solve this issue the government create the milk quotas and limited imports of milk from the US. While I agree that it creates a somewhat absurd situation, I disagree that it's necessarily a bad thing. I much prefer drinking milk from my farmer friend who takes good care of his cows than some megafarm in the US.
On top of that, the US government subsidizes/bails out those mega-farms as well.
US dairy consumption has been going down for decades, and yet production volume is up. Milk is being dumped into the (metaphorical? literal?) gutter because of over-production.
See also EU:
> Multibillion-euro dairy multinationals are exploiting rock-bottom European milk prices to expand aggressively into West Africa. Over five years, they have nearly tripled their exports to the region, shipping milk powder produced by heavily subsidized European farmers to be transformed into liquid milk for the region's booming middle class.
* https://www.politico.eu/article/eus-milk-scramble-for-africa...
AFAICT, the only country that has a completely open market is New Zealand.
I truly hope this isn't the case, because I love cheese and would gladly do my part to help get rid of the excess production.
https://adisagroblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/milchkrise1-di...
So yes, we have managed to protect the "family farm" model, but you can't actually buy their milk. To me, that's pretty stupid; I don't mind the price, but I do mind not knowing where my milk comes from.
To be clear I am not a fan of all the restrictions either. One of my friend brought fresh cheese curds from his farm to a diner between friends and explained that just for doing that the fine could be as high as 4000$.
I'm confused - are you suggesting that raw milk is unfit for consumption due to the fat content?
I ask because I (and probably lots of the other Indians on here) grew up drinking raw buffalo (Asian Water Buffalo) milk at home. That's about 7-8% fat. I knew plenty of people who got raw cow milk as well.
Of course, it was standard practice to "cook" the milk before consumption, which would cause cream to separate out. The cream would be skimmed off for other purposes, but usually the kids got the full cream milk.
I also have a coworker whose father owns a small dairy farm that sells directly to the co-ops. Different business model.
No, in Canada it's not a choice. Any farmer that has milk quotas cannot sell directly to consumers, even inside the farm gate.
Some provinces allow farmers a "personal use" exemption, which enables non-milk farmers (i.e., farmers who happen to own a cow or two; quota holders are ineligible) to sell very small quantities of cow milk to consumers inside the farm gates. The largest I believe is Alberta that has a 50 litre a day exemption.
You are right in using the singular “I” in that sentence but to make it compatible with the policy you are proposing you have to swap it with “we” because thats what policies do, they force others to adhere to your preferences. To get to the bottom of it: By putting it like this you are basically stating that most individuals are not able to make this decision on their own.
First that goes against what I believe Individuals are capable of, but second exposing a society for too long to these paternalistic policies seems to subtract from the capability and willingness of individuals to take responsibility for their life
There is also the idea of food independence from the US. Trump and COVID showed that when a crisis occurs the US interests will be put first and I don't see anything positive coming from outsourcing our food production and transformation to a southern neighbour that might cut the tap with little warning.
None of us have the nerve to do it.
https://www.amazon.ca/Kerrygold-Pure-Irish-Butter-Unsalted/d...
But I'm also so curious as to how this is going to work, I may just try.
Don't know about the standards - wouldn't be surprised that they are lower - but I don't recall hearing much if anything about safety issues at any kind of frequency - so what would they be 'exposing' people to??
Also outrageously quota'd.
If any Europeans want a good laugh-slash-cry, search 'cheese' on a Canadian supermarket site.
(I'm sure Canadians make nice stuff too, and why wouldn't Quebec produce plenty of 'French' cheeses, but you'd have to learn what the rough equivalents are called, because it's not going to have its protected-origin name. (And then there's all the stuff that's sliced or shredded or squirty, and heavily coloured, that seems way more popular in NA. But I don't include that in being sure they make 'nice stuff'. ;)))
Between hard butter and cold coffee/tea this is why every Canadian kitchen has a microwave. I have also come to think of the two summer months as 'soft butter season' because I can just spread it directly on my toast in the morning.
To stay ontopic, I completely gave up spreading the butter as it's stored in the fridge year round. Just cutting thin slices and laying them on the bread is ok.
It's two bowls. Put the butter in one bowl. Put a 1/4" of water in the other. Flip the butter-bowl upside down into the water-bowl. Leave it on your table. Voila. spreadable butter.
If it's not spreadable (because you just got it out of the fridge or you keep your house chilly), because it's in a ceramic bowl you can just chop/squish/stir.
On the butter front, we get it delivered from a local dairy and for about half the year its too hard for easy spreading. We keep it on the counter and I basically put a patty of it on my toast and then stick it back in the toaster oven for another 30 seconds while I get my peanut butter out.
Meanwhile, here in the Netherlands, the gov advertises that 18 degrees is enough (19 is considered standard).
This is because the air temperature is only one component that determines how warm one feels:
> The importance of the MRT can be illustrated by something we’ve all experienced. In an older home in the middle of winter, the ambient air temperature indoors can be 68 to 70 degrees [F], and yet we feel cold when we’re near a window. That’s because the cold interior pane of glass in that window is literally sucking warmth away from us, or, to put it more accurately, our bodies are emitting heat to that cold surface, which causes us to feel cold. This is the inverse of the experience of feeling warmed by the sun outdoors on a cold winter day. Our skin has high emissivity and absorptivity, meaning we’re very sensitive to radiant heat loss and gain.
* https://blipdesign.com/blog/passive-house-2/mean-radiant-tem...
We also used to use a lot of wood in stoves for heating and in most rural areas this is the main way to heat up at winter, can't you do the same? $400 for heating looks a bit too high, with a few thousand dollars you can insulate a small house if you do it yourself.
You should message them, tell them to turn their thermostat up.
I think these type of stories are what journalists live for. "Did you see how I used 'churned up' in that sentence? Hahaha"
Palm oil feedstocks do result in increased palmitic acid content of milk, see e.g.: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002203020... ("As the intake of palmitic acid increased with the PALM diets, milk palmitic acid concentrations were increased (P < 0.0001). When 1,500 g/d of PALM was consumed, milk palmitic acid concentration was increased by 50% compared with the control.")
> Little research has been done on the true impact of palm oil in dairy, but agricultural experts say butter made from cows fed with palm oil has a higher melting point and, therefore, may be harder to spread at room temperature.
The article conflates palm oil in cow feed with palm oil in dairy. The lipid profile of butter can be measured as can its physical properties. Animal feed transparency is never going to be pretty.
I wonder if it is an issue in the US too but Americans don’t leave their butter out as much as other countries.
Winter, when Texas goes dark with a little snow? Covid, when most of the developed world is worse than Canada?
That's the biggest problem on being Canadian, it's hard to find something to bitch about. When you live in a nice country all your dramas become pathetic.
Btw, Canadian butter is excellent, even some of the cheapest ones. I use the President's Choice brand and like it.
Like that veritable mountain of sulfur that you guys have no clue with what to do...
https://www.southernfriedscience.com/alberta-canada-is-the-p...
Utterly clueless.