Now that he's officially president of the Practical Farmers of Ontario, Desboro organic farmer Sean McGivern said the first order of business is to loosen the rules governing supply management quotas for broiler, egg and turkey production to allow farmers with no quota to participate more in those sectors.
McGivern was elected PFO president March 31 at the group's inaugural meeting, after serving as the upstart farm organization's interim leader. He intends to set up meetings with the respective marketing boards of those commodities, he said Tuesday by phone from his office at Grassroots Organics.
In all, 53 people attended PFO's first official meeting, a turnout McGivern said made him "pretty happy," though he allowed the Peterborough location may have limited attendance. He said about 200 farmers are members. Within 24 months he anticipates having 2,000 members, including farmers, who are voting members, and associate-members or consumers, who have no vote.
McGivern, 32, runs an organic flour milling and cereal manufacturing business, which he said exports organic grains and flours and cereals worldwide. He also farms 2,000 acres and has beef cattle and hogs.
The new farm organization folds in the Ontario Small Farm Producers Association with agriculture issues of the Ontario Landowners Association, whose Grey-Bruce chapter McGivern once led. Other PFO founding members include Durham raw milk activist Michael Schmidt, Shallow Lake farmer Rae MacIntyre -- a former Grey County National Farmers Union president -- and Ottawa farmer Steve Dick, all of whom resigned from the National Farmers Union with McGivern.
McGivern is a former Ontario coordinator of the NFU, on which he used to sit as a national director, before a falling out last year over what he said were bylaw matters concerning selection of Ontario representatives. He has said the NFU position on supply management was also a factor.
"We're in favour of equality for all farmers," he said of the Practical Farmers. "We don't think that the marketing boards need to throw the baby out with the bath water. But if they don't negotiate and they don't develop a plan forward, I think they're going to find themselves in a bad situation."
McGivern noted Canada is the last country to maintain a quota system for farm commodities, though he allowed that the U.S. and Europe, for example, have different methods of subsidization.
"So really, what we're doing, our organization I think, is trying to plan for the future and we know that supply management will come to an end, just as it has in the tobacco board, the hog board, the wheat board," he said. "So to think that the dairy and poultry sectors are going to be saved is not a very safe, it's an irresponsible position to take."
He has said, for example, minimum quota purchase for meat birds is 14,000 units of quota, or about 15,000 chickens. McGivern thinks the quota exemptions, the 100 laying hens and 300 meat birds, should be increased for small farms to give them a better chance to succeed.