One Marketing Board Down

The Canadian Wheat Board no longer has a monopoly on the same of wheat by growers in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and North East BC.   Keep in the 85,000,000 bushels produced in Ontario did not fall under the Canadian Wheat Board but the 36,000,000 bushels from BC do.

I am unaware of any supply management systems out there that do not create unintended consequences.

In the case of the Canadian Wheat Board, the idea of a farmer supplying a bakery directly was not allowed.   If you produced a higher quality grain, you had no control over how it could be marketed and odds are could not not get what the grain should be worth.

The CWB has also inhibited innovation and entrepreneurial activity by farmers.

In BC we still have a number of supply management boards

• The Egg Marketing Board
• BC Milk Producers
• BC Chicken Marketing Board
• BC Hog Marketing Commission
• BC Turkey Marketing Board

The primary impacts of these supply management boards are:

• Increased cost of food for the public, with the impact being hardest on the poorest people
• Creates major barriers to entry for new farmers
• Slows innovation
• No incentives to try anything new

When the idea of supply management came about, a much large portion of the population in Canada was directly involved with farming.    We now have a tiny potion of the national population involved with farming and we expect the general public to provide them with a subsidy to be able to survive