FEBRUARY 2017 • COUNTRY LIFE IN BC


11 Chicken growers ready to battle over pricing by DAVID SCHMIDT


ABBOTSFORD – The BC Chicken Marketing Board did not meet its self- imposed mid-January deadline of reviewing the current pricing methodology and now does not expect to complete the review until late February.


As a result, growers and processors will try to negotiate another interim pricing agreement for period A-142 (February 19 to April 15) at a Pricing and Production Advisory Committee (PPAC) meeting, February 6. In 2010, the BC Farm Industry Review Board ordered the BCCMB to adopt a formula which would set the BC live price at 4.35 cents per kg over the weighted average of the Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario live price. In 2015, growers and processors were able to reach an agreement increasing the differential to 4.85 cents per kg for six periods ending in A-139. That differential was increased to 5.75 cents for periods A-140 and 141.


At a well-attended BC Chicken Growers Association meeting in Abbotsford, January 18, growers gave their association representatives a mandate to take a hard line at the February PPAC meeting, stressing the current differential is not enough to compensate for BC’s higher cost of


we’re ready for it.”


BCCGA president Dale Krahn told growers to help the association by individually bringing their concerns to the attention of BCCMB directors, FIRB directors and their MLA’s.


“Use your voice,” he said, claiming even BC Minister of Agriculture Norm Letnick does not know the extent of growers’ financial struggles. The looming pricing battle is not the growers’ only battle with the board. Krahn told growers the association has appealed the BCCMB’s recent changes to its new entrant program.


In December, the board FILE PHOTO


production. It was pointed out BC feed prices are about $100 per tonne higher than those in Ontario while Ontario processors also pay for catching costs; BC processors do not. “We’re not getting our just return,” one grower commented.


Growers were outraged that they were not able to direct their concerns to the board as neither BCCMB executive director Bill Vanderspek nor any board directors attended the meeting. (All had gone to Ottawa for a Chicken Farmers of Canada


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meeting.)


“It’s pathetic that we’re having a meeting and there is no board representation,” one grower said.


Prepare for battle


Growers were warned to expect another epic battle after the board completes its pricing review. “Processors want the differential to go back down to 4.35 cents per kg but we’re not going to accept that,” BCCGA director Fred Redekop told them. “It’s going to be a battle and


announced it is increasing the entry level of incentive quota from 11,189 kgs to 20,000 kgs per cycle for both existing and new mainstream growers in the New Entrant Grower program. It also added a matching program under which the BCCMB will match up to 10,000 kgs of quota new entrant growers obtain on the open market. A group of specialty growers led by Jason Lindhout is appealing the revised program on the grounds that it does not also include specialty growers while the BCCGA is asking where the additional new entrant quota is coming from and


questioning the requirement for new entrant growers to supply a specific processor for 10 years.


First and Still Foremost.


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