ABP Magazine

[grassfarmer]

rkaiser, the figures came from an NFU document(... gasp, horror, those lunatic socialists!) showing how free trade wasn't workingfor farmers. It was commissioned to show the negative effects the 1989 Canada-US free trade agreement,1994 NAFTA agreement and 1995 WTO agreement on agriculture had on producers. The result of these 14 years of free trade were:

1988 - Canadian agri-food exports $10.9 billion
2002 - Canadian agri-food exports $28.2 billion

1988 - realised net farm income $3.9 billion
2002 - realised net farm income $4.1 billion

1988 - farm debt $22.5 billion
2002 - farm debt $44.2 billion

These figures obviously will pale into insignificance when compared to the 2003-2005 results with the major ramping up of tran-national piracy through the "BSE" crisis and low grain prices.

[grassfarmer]

Further to the last post I just noticed an interesting research piece out of Quebec. They highlight a 1kg T-bone steak that retails in the store for $22.00, the farmer got paid $2.80 for it and they reckoned the farmer would have made a profit from the beef if he had got only an extra $1.25 for it. The question they ask is would it be unreasonable for the processor/retailer to give up the extra $1.25 from his $19.20 share of the steak rather than asking the consumer to pay an extra $1.25?

Just think about that $19.20 share off one T-bone steak that's close to Cowmans $20 per animal margin for processing a whole beef!

[cowman]

These are very interesting and informative posts! Sort of makes me question some of the things I have believed in!
Grassfarmer: The $19.20 "profit" didn't all go to Cargill? Assuming the beef was sold as a carcass they would have gotten very little of that mark up? The retailer/cutter would have made the majority of the money?
You know what it costs to get an animal killed and chilled, and you know what it costs to get him cut up. Kill and chill is fairly cheap? Cutting and packaging isn't.

[PureCountry]

Kill and chill is far from cheap anymore Cowman. Check with some abbatoirs - it's scary.