Canada dumps good milk down the drain while people go hungry and suffer high food prices. The supply management system is not perfect.
You need to aim for excess, to ensure enough is produced during drought, animal sickness, and other variability.
What Canada does is ensure there is excess, but not crazy amounts. It also ensures the market price is fair to farmers.
What you call "high food price" we call "farmers not going bankrupt".
And while nothing is perfect, supply management is far better than the alternatives.
Why, then, only dairy, poultry, eggs, and — at least until 2007 when the government bought back the quota — tobacco production? If the farmers growing the foods that are actually deemed important in a healthy diet end up bankrupt, no big deal?
> It also ensures the market price is fair to farmers.
Well, it creates a two-tier system where the 'blessed' farmers who are born into it (or born into a European farm that can be sold at a high enough price to buy a farmer in Canada out) have artificially high incomes to spend on land, equipment, etc. at inflated prices. It is hard to think that is fair to all the other farmers who have to compete against the farmers of the world when selling their product but have to pay supply managed farmer prices for inputs.
I suppose everything is in the eye of the beholder. I'll grant you that all the other farmers' retirement plan is to sell off their land to a supply managed farmer who will pay way more than it is worth. That keeps the peace. Bit sad to see everything go to those producers who get special treatment, though.
At the end of the day, consumers get stable and somewhat realistic prices and supply, while farmers also get stable income.
Which? You can't have both. Input costs are subject to the whims of non-supply managed markets. When, say, input costs rise either the farmer has to absorb that cost (unstable income), or the cost has to be passed on to the customer (unstable consumer price).
> and supply
Oh? https://www.ctvnews.ca/atlantic/article/some-maritime-grocer..., https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/cana..., https://farmersforum.com/cracks-in-supply-management/
> Which? You can't have both
Maybe not in USA. Looks like another problem that only one developed country says is impossible to solve.
Food prices are mostly stable (relatively speaking)
Maybe not. I grew up on a Canadian dairy farm, and have continued to farm in Canada ever since, so that is beyond my expertise. I have not participated in US-based farming. I can only meaningfully speak to Canadian agriculture.
A connection to the USA is interesting, but what you are trying to get across is not entirely understood on my end. Perhaps not having ties to the USA means I don't have an implied context? Fill me in. I am curious.
So, you say a country can't have stable income for farmers and realistic prices for consumers? Allowing to waste some produce and subsidizing farmers seems to be working in Europe (and probably in Canada). We have stable (but higher) prices. When you said we can't have that, I thought you are from USA, they are famous for having problems that are solved everywhere (like universal healthcare and gun violence) and it's a very known meme[0][1][2].
[0] https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/1116082388344422400
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/l55sv4...
[2] https://images7.memedroid.com/images/UPLOADED206/66c508dbb70...
The topic is supply management. Supply management cannot offer both consumer price stability and stable incomes for farmers at the same time, as was explained in more detail in the previous comment. At least not in a world where the non-supply managed markets aren't also stable. Of course, if non-supply managed markets are also stable, then this whole thing is moot. The original premise was that non-supply managed markets cannot be stable, thus why it was said supply management is necessary.
> subsidizing farmers seems to be working in Europe (and probably in Canada)
The whole idea behind supply management is that there isn't a (direct) subsidy. Technically the government compelling consumers to buy from an organized monopoly is still an indirect subsidy, granted, but indirect subsidies lose the control that direct subsidies have. You are right that in theory a direct subsidy scheme could allow both stable incomes and stable consumer prices at the same time, but that is not the system Canada uses here.
> I thought you are from USA
Why? What would someone from the USA know about Canadian agriculture? I expect most Canadians don't even know anything about this topic. If I weren't a Canadian farmer, I sincerely doubt I would have been able to contribute anything.
Funny, my family is in farming in Ontario, and we know the the number of family owned farms is in the decline! So the system isn't really working to stop the trend.
Supply management isn't perfect, but a few players benifit greatly from it and resist the change at the expense of the consumer!
I'm not sure if you realise this, but the exact same thing happens in the US.