An agricultural ecologist makes the case for building the supply managed model rather than losing it in trade talks.
A Canadian agricultural ecologist says the supply management model is one worth building on, not destroying.
Claude Caldwell, professor emeritus at Dalhousie University and a former federal researcher, said regional and rural-urban divides have developed that send mixed messages to politicians and negotiators, and he worries about upcoming trade negotiations.
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“I think that if the public takes a good, unbiased appraisal of supply management, using the lenses of economics, environment, food safety and social fabric, there will be consensus on the need to maintain and build such concepts as supply management,” he said.
Caldwell makes his case in one of the articles in a “transition binder” for the new agriculture minister produced by the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute.
Supply management is contentious at times, with some willing to throw it under the trade negotiation bus and others fighting to retain it.
During discussion of private member’s bill C-282 in the last Parliament, exporters argued that everything should be on the trade table, while proponents said they had already given away enough market access in previous trade deals.
However, Caldwell said looking at it only through an economic lens is misleading.
An agroecological approach to supply management shows it to be an economic concept from 50 years ago that provides ecological and social solutions today, he said.
He wrote that agriculture is not just growing crops and raising animals.
“Agriculture is the science, art, politics and sociology of changing sunlight (plus soil and water) into happy, healthy people,” he said.
“When one looks at any aspect of agricultural policy only from an economic standpoint, we tend to make ecological and social blunders.”
Losing supply management would mean losing a large part of rural Canada, he said. American farmers who already over produce would dump milk into Quebec, and those effects would cascade throughout the country.
To those who say American milk is cheaper, Caldwell said that’s because the government pays for it. In 2024, Wisconsin produced about 15 billion kilograms of milk, compared to 9.5 billion kg in Canada.
Federal and state commodity programs paid out US$7.85 billion in commodity subsidies between 1995 and 2023 to Wisconsin dairies, the paper said. U.S. data shows dairy farms there have higher production costs than what they earn from the market.
The lower cost of American milk, therefore, isn’t the true consumer cost, Caldwell said.
He also worries about quality control. In April, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration suspended a quality control program that tested fluid milk and other dairy products after 20,000 employees were cut.
He doubts Canadians want products they can’t trust.
Still, the Canada-United States-Mexico Trade Agreement will be renegotiated in 2026, if not sooner.
“There’s no doubt the U.S. will put pressure on supply management,” Caldwell said.
“The thing is, even if we gave it away, it would not solve their problems.”
It’s more likely that American dairy farmers would prefer to farm in a supply managed system, he said, but processors who currently buy cheap raw products would not be happy.
Caldwell said while Canada’s system could be modified or updated, the principles behind it remain sound. Value chains have to be efficient but equitable.
”Too often, our agri-food value chains are biased towards processors and retailers. The only sustainable value chain is one that is fair. Supply management produces fair value chains. We need to build on that model, not destroy it,” he said.