Thank you, sir.
Good morning, everyone. My name is Havey Whidden. I'm here this morning with the general manager of Dairy Farmers of Nova Scotia, Brian Cameron. I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you today.
I'm a dairy farmer. My farm is located about 20 miles south of here. With the help of my wife, my daughter, and my future son-in-law, we milk 90 Holstein dairy cows. Dairy farming has been my career for the past 29 years.
Today I'm here representing Dairy Farmers of Nova Scotia. I am the vice-chairman. We have a staff of six employees at Dairy Farmers of Nova Scotia, and all expenses at Dairy Farmers of Nova Scotia are funded by our membership. We have 276 dairy producers in Nova Scotia, and they produce 170 million litres of milk annually. Dairy Farmers of Nova Scotia is a member of Dairy Farmers of Canada.
I am pleased to be here today. It's not often I get to speak to such a distinguished group of influential politicians. I want to use my time today to speak to you about supply management; no surprise there, I expect.
Supply management has been good for Canada, not only for producers but for all of Canada. Our processors have a consistent supply of high-quality milk at a predictable, stable price. Our consumers have a consistent supply of a wide selection of high-quality, healthy, safe, and reasonably priced dairy products. And to top it all off, all returns to the farmer for milk come from the marketplace, with no government support.
But we do need government support. We need government support to maintain supply management. We need government support to maintain the three pillars of supply management. All three pillars are crucial.
Production discipline is one of the pillars of supply management. We do this through a quota system. Producers are allotted production quotas based on Canadian consumer requirements. In other words, we produce enough milk to supply the demand for dairy products in Canada, with a very small amount for export to help balance the system.
The second pillar is fair returns to producers. Milk pricing at the farm gate is transparent. A great deal of effort is put into milk pricing to make sure it is fair and reasonable.
The third pillar is import controls. We need government to maintain import controls at our borders. Without import controls, the other two pillars cannot function. Without the ability to control the amount of imported product coming into Canada, Canadian dairy producers would not be able to predict the amount of milk we need to produce. If we don't know the amount of milk to produce, we cannot maintain a stable price.
Canadian dairy producers have lived with varying degrees of uncertainty of our supply management system for the past 15 years. In order to have a healthy industry, we need to have confidence in our future. Canadian dairy farmers have huge amounts of capital invested in their farms. We need to know that government will continue to support Nova Scotia for the benefit of all producers. Nova Scotia dairy farms are a very important part of rural Nova Scotia.
Our Canadian government must support and maintain one of the best marketing systems in the world: supply management. Supply management also must be recognized as a business risk management pillar of the agriculture policy framework. I want to repeat that because I feel it's very important: supply management also must be recognized as a business risk management pillar of the agriculture policy framework.
Without supply management, the Canadian dairy industry would have great difficulty surviving. It requires huge investment today to operate, maintain, and invest in modern dairy farms. All this requires financial stability and long-term confidence in our industry.
The whole-farm approach to the Canadian agricultural income stabilization program is a disincentive for dairy farmers to be involved in the program. With supply management providing a fair return for the milk sold, this would cancel out the losses in another enterprise that is doing poorly. Milk sales give a fair return for the dairy enterprise and not for other areas of the farm. Dairy producers will only buy into production insurance if milk income and business interruption are covered by the production insurance program.
In conclusion, dairy producers in Nova Scotia see the revisions of the agriculture policy framework as being important to moving agriculture forward. Supply management and its three pillars must be included as a program under the business risk management pillar.
I believe we as a country must soon make some important decisions about our agriculture industry. We need to make some decisions about where our food will come from to feed Canadians in the future. We must decide whether we believe it's important to have the ability as a country to produce the food required to feed our people.
The average age of a Canadian dairy farmer is 47. A lot of us will be retiring in the next 10 to 15 years. Without a stable future that can provide for the financial requirements, many good potential dairy farmers are making other career choices.
Thank you for your attention.