SEPTEMBER 2018 • COUNTRY LIFE IN BC Surprise quota
increase for dairies Milk producers also receive a price increase in September
by DAVID SCHMIDT ABBOTSFORD – BC milk
producers got some welcome news at the beginning of August as the BC Milk Marketing Board announced increases in both the amount of quota and the price of milk. Effective August 1, eligible
producers received a 2% pro rata increase in their quota. The increase was a surprise; weeks earlier, the board had said no increase was imminent.
The quota increase was the
first in Western Canada in more than a year as the Western Milk Pool had declared a moratorium on new quota issuance citing a lack of processor capacity. “We constantly monitor
processing capacity and after a careful review, we determined there was enough room to issue new quota,” BCMMB general manager Robert Delage said. As of mid-August, no other
Western province had followed suit, perhaps because producers in those provinces underproduce. The quota increase is
subject to the new quota allocation rules the Farm Industry Review Board set this spring. That means producers who sold any of their quota during the previous 12 months were ineligible to receive the new allocation. It also means producers were given 10 days to refuse the
new allocation. Refusing the allocation does not prevent those producers from receiving future quota increases. Since the FIRB directive removed the Last In- First Out (LIFO) requirement on quota sales, producers can choose to sell some of their existing quota to accommodate the new issuance without facing a 100% assessment. However, any such sale would prevent them from receiving new quota for 12 months. The board also announced a 4.52% increase in the price of milk effective September 1. Although current national policy is to increase the price of milk only once a year in February, the Canadian Dairy Commission decided the increase was warranted under its exceptional circumstances policy. In this case, the CDC noted that cost of production rose 5.1% in Canada last year. BC producers did not have to wait until September to see an increase in their milk cheques, however, as their July milk cheques increased significantly over June. The average BC producer return per hectolitre was $78.8556, more than 4.5% higher than in June.
The board explained that
the increase was due to a reinstatement of over-quota penalties which saw the Western Milk Pool receive $1.9 million in penalties from the P-5 (Ontario-East).
9
Growing carrots can be challenging – and choosing the right variety can make all the difference. A BC Seed Trials open house at Kelowna’s Sunshine Farms co-hosted by UBC, Young Agrarians and FarmFolk/CityFolk in August gave small-plot growers Blake Bjornson and Kayla Neufeld an opportunity to consider (and sample) their options. MYRNA STARK LEADER PHOTO
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