Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Black questions feed conversion


Glenn Black of Manitoulin Island is questioning the feed conversion formula the Chicken Farmers of Ontario marketing board is using in its chicken-pricing formula.

He says the board has changed the feed-conversion ratio it was using between July, 2007, and December, 2008, from 1.82 kilograms of feed to produce a kilogram of chicken to two.

That amounts to a 9.8 per cent increase in the cost of feed, Black calculates, and because feed is 60 per cent of the total CFO formula cost of production, it increases the prices processors pay farmers by 5.8 per cent.

Black then checked the margin between the farm price and the Wal-Mart retail price at its store at Sarnia, and figures the markup is 853 per cent.

At that rate, he figures consumers are paying an extra $947 million a year.

The chicken board is supervised by the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission and at the national level there is supervision by the Farm Products Council of Canada. Both have an obligation to check the pricing formulas the marketing boards are using.

Neither one has much of a track record in defending the public from marketing board abuses of their powers and privileges.

Black is a small-flock owner who is challenging the chicken board’s limit of 300 birds that can be raised without owning quota. He agrees with the Practical Farmers of Ontario organization, which also wants the limit raised to 2,000 and says it will file an application for a hearing by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food Appeal Tribunal.

Black is also asking Ontario Premier and Agriculture Minister Kathleen Wynne to allow those who raise fewer than 300 birds per quota period to do on-farm processing without provincial meat inspection.