American family farmers support Canada’s Supply Management system
By the National Family Farm Coalition
The National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) is a United States-based sister organization to the National Farmers Union (NFU). Both organizations are members of La Via Campesina, an international food sovereignty movement.
As the U.S. and Canada navigate uncertainty, unilateral tariff provocations, and the official review of the USMCA trade agreement, the National Family Farm Coalition, supports our Canadian family farming allies in their work to keep Canada’s supply management system intact. We are an alliance of 30 grassroots farmer- and advocate-led groups across the United States representing the rights and interests of over 100,000 independent family farmers, ranchers, and fishermen, and we are calling on our own government to address the U.S. dairy crisis through systemic policy reform and production management that respects and supports dairy farmers and working families on both sides of the border.
We trace our trade and dairy policy objectives back to the New Deal era, when public policy managed agricultural markets to ensure adequate food supplies as well as fair prices for U.S. producers through supply management, price floors, and parity pricing. Over the past five decades, these important market management policies have been largely dismantled. Their absence is contributing to a multigenerational crisis for family farmers. Prices fall below farmers’ cost of production, leading to farm foreclosures and farmland consolidation, shifting production in the U.S. to a system that depends on global commodity trade, not food production, and certainly not local food production.
The U.S. dairy sector has been particularly hard hit by this policy approach – with fewer than 25,000 dairy farms remaining in the United States, a 95% loss of these farms since the 1970s when 648,000 family-scale dairies were in operation. Since 2017, the U.S. has seen a 40% decline of dairy farms in just eight years. Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed in 1992, U.S. agribusiness has sold a false solution to U.S. dairy farmers, claiming that replacing a domestic price stabilization policy with more foreign trade would bring higher profits for family-scale operations. More than three decades of failed export-oriented agricultural trade policy reveals the agenda behind this narrative. As a leading voice for family-scale dairies in the U.S., NFFC and our members condemn efforts in the U.S. and in Canada to undermine supply management by placing corporate profits ahead of farmer livelihoods.
Rather than attempting to turn the relatively small Canadian market into an outlet for U.S. oversupply of dairy production, we in the U.S. should draw insight from the Canadian system, and more importantly revisit the U.S.’s own agricultural policy history, to once again manage agricultural markets to ensure fair compensation for producers, reasonable prices for consumers, fair wages and treatment for farm workers, and care for the animals and environment our farmers base their livelihoods upon. Toward this goal, NFFC has crafted the Milk from Family Dairies Act (MDFA) for reforming dairy policy in the U.S. toward supply management and fair price floors, and in-turn respecting Canada’s dairy supply management system, in the spirit of supporting food sovereignty in both countries.
NFFC’s farmer members believe communities have the right to determine how their food is grown and harvested; that everyone in the food system should receive fair prices or wages; that all producers should have equitable access to credit, land, seeds, water, markets, and other resources; and, that our food and agriculture policy must support farming, ranching, and fishing practices that provide for the current generation without compromising future generations. Since our founding in 1986, we have been advocating for fair trade policy in the U.S. and across North America, as well as for systemic reform of the dairy policy in the United States.
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For more information:
NFFC: Jordan Treakle, Coalition Policy and Programs Director, jordan@nffc.net
NFU: Cathy Holtslander, Director of Research and Policy, holtslander@nfu.ca
