alt Hacker NewsYou can't produce an exact amount of food. It isn't an assembly line, it's farming, it's biological.
You need to aim for excess, to ensure enough is produced during drought, animal sickness, and other variability.
What Canada does is ensure there is excess, but not crazy amounts. It also ensures the market price is fair to farmers.
What you call "high food price" we call "farmers not going bankrupt".
And while nothing is perfect, supply management is far better than the alternatives.
> supply management is far better than the alternatives.
Why, then, only dairy, poultry, eggs, and — at least until 2007 when the government bought back the quota — tobacco production? If the farmers growing the foods that are actually deemed important in a healthy diet end up bankrupt, no big deal?
> It also ensures the market price is fair to farmers.
Well, it creates a two-tier system where the 'blessed' farmers who are born into it (or born into a European farm that can be sold at a high enough price to buy a farmer in Canada out) have artificially high incomes to spend on land, equipment, etc. at inflated prices. It is hard to think that is fair to all the other farmers who have to compete against the farmers of the world when selling their product but have to pay supply managed farmer prices for inputs.
I suppose everything is in the eye of the beholder. I'll grant you that all the other farmers' retirement plan is to sell off their land to a supply managed farmer who will pay way more than it is worth. That keeps the peace. Bit sad to see everything go to those producers who get special treatment, though.