More debate over supply management

From Peter O’Neil in the National Post:

“OTTAWA — Farms in the heavily protected dairy, poultry and egg sectors, concentrated primarily in Central Canada, are far more likely than those in other sectors to be high-priced operations owned by corporations, according to an internal 2011 analysis done by Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz’s department.

The figures were assembled last November as senior officials in Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada scrambled to respond to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s announcement that Canada will put the controversial supply management system on the table as a price to enter the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade negotiations.

Bureaucrat is moved to a new post

So why is that newsworthy you might wonder. Well, his new post is with the “Normal Farm Practices Protection Board”. Never knew there was such a thing? Join the club. Obviously someone has to be standing on guard for normal farm practices such as dairy farmers drinking their own raw milk from the bulk tank, wouldn’t you suppose.

Could it be Kirk Walstedt is just the man to do it?

Then there’s the practice of saving your seed and planting it again the next year. If you told someone 50 years ago that practice would someday be threatened, they’d have looked at you like you were nuts.

It’d be great to get further intel on how this board came to be and what it’s mandate really is. Anyone?

Read the story here, from Jim Romahn, on Agri 007.