The Plan

Here is my plan for myself and my community until we can get the abusive Supply Management regulations changed, declared illegal, or unconstitutional.

On my farm, I continue to raise my 99 laying chickens, and provide fresh, ungraded farm eggs to my community every day.  I still have my 1 (one) meat chicken as a token bird, so that I meet on an ongoing basis the definition of a chicken farmer.  This enable me to complain about the actions of Chicken Farmers of Ontario ("CFO") while my wife and I eat our way through our freezer full of our previous meat birds I produced but were unable to sell under current Small Flock Regulations.  I also have ducks, geese, turkeys, goats, and livestock guardian dogs.

I have filed a request for reconsideration of the OMAFRA Tribunal's decision on my appeal against Chicken Farmers of Ontario ("CFO").

Asking the fox to reconsider his decision to eat one of my chickens has little chance of success, but it is a mandatory step in the long, twisted bureaucratic process of Supply Management.

Under CFO's Small Flock Regulation No. 2484-2014, Section 1.(j) states a Small Flock Grower is a person, and each person can grow 300 birds per year.  Under Ontario law, corporations are persons, equal to flesh and blood persons.

I attended the recent seminar sponsored by Practical Farmers of Ontario , and heard Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms speak.  Using mobile facilities as recommended by him, I can move my entire free range meat bird operation in an afternoon from one lot to another if I need to.

Therefore I'm making plans to rent (via 2 separate companies) 2 small patches of agricultural land from other farmers/owners, and those companies will have exclusive first rights to raise chickens on those farm lots.  With my own farm, that will give me 3 separate lots.  With 3 farm lots at 300 birds per lot, is 900 meat birds in total; totally in compliance under the current Supply Management rules for Small Flocks.  These 900 meat birds will nicely serve the needs for safe, nutritious, affordable, and locally produced chicken in my local community.

Unfortunately, Section 21 of the Reg. says CFO can change the Small Flock Regulation any time they please.  I am confident that CFO will harass me and others who dare to try this plan, or CFO will invent crazy definitions and twist the interpretation of their Small Flock Regulation so as to make my plan be prohibited, or arbitrarily and unilaterally change the CFO Regulation so that my plan is expressly banned.

You might conclude that I do not have much faith or trust in CFO.

I don't.

CFO has a valuable monopoly to protect.  CFO's members are all multi-millionaires, but they wish to become billionaires.  Many of CFO members have slowly become trapped puppets who are controlled by Big Ag.

Therefore CFO will likely do anything necessary to protect their monopoly, and achieve the goals of their members and Big Ag.

I believe CFO intends to continue violating the civil rights of small flock farmers, and using CFO's monopoly as a weapon against consumers.


If there are other like minded persons who want to help implement this interim plan, or work co-operatively to prepare for CFO's retaliatory strike against all those who consider implementing this plan, please leave your comments, or contact me in private.

Can Supply Management be Saved?

As Chris Hedges says, you can take a step toward supporting truth and justice, or you can take a step towards privilege and power.  Doing one of these automatically undoes the other.  Choose your path.

This is similar to the polarization of "You're either with us, or against us."
 
I received an email providing me feedback on my proposed replacement for Canada's Supply Management System .  The email was from a Supply Management insider ("SMI"), a well informed, influential insider to Supply Management, a close advisor to those with their hands on SM's levers of power.  So as to protect this person from outing and subsequent ridicule, I will not name them, thereby encouraging others like them to come forward with their comments & suggestions.

SMI suggested to me that SM could be improved, needs to be improved, but radical change of SM need not occur.  SMI feels that abandoning SM for anarchy, or nihilism, or some ill-defined alternative need not occur.  SMI likes very much the 4 Principles I proposed for any solution to the current SM system.  SMI seems to feel that it is a virtue that Canada's SM system is able to charge 300% for its SM commodities.

SMI feels that as current trade talks continue, we will probably be forced to open our borders some more to foreign goods (ie. the SM commodities of dairy, eggs, chicken, and turkeys), and our high domestic prices may have to drop somewhat, but SMI sees this as no reason to throw the SM baby out with the bathwater.  SMI feels it is highly unlikely that Canada will be forced to fully open its markets to foreign goods and totally dismantle our SM system.  The nuance I sense is that SMI feels that the winds of change against SM are mainly from outside of Canada, and most people within Canada are oblivious or apathetic towards SM and what it does for us (does to us).  It's almost as if SMI feels that SM is similar to maple syrup and hockey, that SM is one of the important factors of what makes us Canadian.

SMI seems to feel my proposal will upset the leaders of SM, cause them to feel threatened, and therefore cause them to fight against it, rather than support it.  SMI said, "...the SM boards themselves need to be convinced that ... their situation is untenable."

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

Quote by Upton Sinclair (1878 - 1968), prolific American writer, including The Jungle (1906), which exposed scandalous conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.  Time magazine called him "a man with every gift except humor and silence."

SMI also said, "Internally I think they see big problems in how the mechanics of the system is operating, but do not see a need to wind the system down. Any proposal for big changes in supply management will need the SM groups' buy-in; they are stuck in marginal changes when they should be making big changes, but I don't see why they would support a process for wind down."

I agree with SMI, that the SM leaders can barely bring themselves to contemplate incremental, marginal changes.

I believe SM leaders have to expend huge efforts hiding the truth from themselves and all others.  Cognitive dissonance is when a person must finally admit a previously denied and avoided truth, for to continue denying it further would be a full admission to themselves of their insanity (ie. no longer in touch with reality).  SM leaders, in my opinion are a long, long way from cognitive dissonance

SMI suggests that I focus my efforts on helping SM to:   a) become a little more liberal;   b) lower their domestic commodity prices just a little (or slow the rate of cost increases ??);  and c) obtain growth in the industry.

My response to SMI was as follows:

Thanks for your feedback, I really appreciate it.

As a management consultant for the last 23 years, I always told my clients, "As bad  as it looks today, 95% of what you were doing is good stuff.  It's that last 5% is what is driving you crazy and causing all of your issues.  We need to focus our efforts there."

When I got started on SM in Jan. 2012, that is what I assumed would apply here as well.

Since then, I'm beginning to see just how bad it is.

Witness the egg marketing board fiasco here:   https://hoosierincanada.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/looking-for-cracks-at-efo-finally/
and here:  http://agri007.blogspot.ca/2012/12/heres-scoop_7234.html

For the chicken side, I calculate that they are raping the Canadian public every year as follows:

• $11 million/yr planned Pullet Supply Management premium (coming soon to a province near you)
• $143 million/yr Chicken feed premium pricing
• $945 million/yr Bogus FCR in farm gate chicken pricing
• $10.8 Billion/yr Premium price of Cdn. chicken over US price
• Total $11.9 Billion per year taken out of Canadian's pocketbook every year.

I hear similar issues on the dairy side.  Witness the pizza pack fiasco on cheese.

Turkey is pretty quiet.  Can we assume all is OK over there?

Pullets can't wait to join SM5, at a starting cost of $11 million per year, and rising.  See http://canadiansmallflockers.blogspot.ca/2013/05/pullet-parasite-11-millionyr-screwing.html

Those who are channeling and directing this SM system, and simultaneously benefiting from it, will they voluntarily stop?  I seriously doubt it.

They now have 2+ generations fully steeped into their traditions and myopic view of the world, similar to how most psychopaths see their victims; they just don't see a problem with what they are doing.   They think they're doing "god's work", and we should all be thankful for their tireless effort on our behalf.

Unfortunately, we don't have Diogenes to help us find the one honest man in the SM system.

I'm sure all of these SM bureaucracies, [ reference to SMI's organization], you, and many others have good people who are trying to do a good job for the "system" they work for.  While they work for the system, they didn't create it, they just accept it as somebody else's decision that they are carrying out the best they can.  In other words, careerism.  It's good for their career to bolster the current SM system as much as they can, because the alternative is frightening.

Those in control of SM will not stop on their own.  We, the Canadian public, can either accept our fate, to continue to be subjected to their whim to do with us as they please, or they have to be stopped against their will.  Like any psychopath worth their salt, they will do everything in their power to retain dominance and control over their historic powers, privileges, freedoms, and their victims.

All that above sounds like a manifesto.  I never thought I'd get that black & white about something.  Unfortunately, I see no other choice with these people.

If all the above is true, or just 1% true, I don't see a graceful evolution, or a few minor fixes around the edges.  SM may have worked & was needed at some time in the past, but is rotten to the core today, and the cancer needs to be removed.

Comments?

If I'm missing something, if there is some glimmer of hope in this pile of smoking ruins called SM, please point it out to me.

Glenn Black
Small Flock Poultry Farmers of Canada

Small Flocker's Strategic Plan 2013 - 2018

We needed a detailed Strategic Plan, so I made one up for 2013 - 2018.

Some people like pictures, so I used some free software on the Internet (Cmap) to construct our 5 yr. Strategic Plan on one sheet of 8.5" x 11" paper.  Here it is in zoomable size:  SFPFC Strategic Plan_2013-2018.



Too small to read?  You can then click on the above link for the SFPFC Strategic Plan pdf file, which will usually open the file using an Adobe Acrobat plug-in for your browser.  At the bottom of that window, in the centre, a small toolbar will appear as you move your computer mouse pointer over this area.  In that toolbar, you will see + - signs, click on the + to zoom in.  Use the scroll bars on the window (right side and bottom) to move around within your magnified view.  That toolbar will also allows you to print, save, change page, or go to the full in-browser version with the Adobe Acrobat symbol on the far right of the toolbar.

Currently, I believe we are at Step 3 in our plan:

3.   Leader openly and publicly explaining and sharing the Vision and the Leader's values, beliefs, plans, and actions with one or more Stakeholders.

We have to be careful to watch out for when others start to implement the Counter Attack (brown coloured section of the Strategic Plan) against Small Flockers and our team of supporters.

When we get there (ie. Counter-Attack Territory) in 6 months to a year from now, we will have to be sure to take the Green Road (The Best Road), rather than the Purple Road (The Easier Road).

Some of you may wonder why I would share our Strategic Plan with the world when we are in a battle for our lives?  It is simple.  We have the might of right.  They hide, while we disclose openly and honestly. The more people who realize that we are just like them, and our cause makes sense, the better it is.

I'm sure the other side are one of the first to download a copy of this Strategic Plan.  Some of the more enlightened of them may even suggest that they steal parts of our plan for themselves, so as to steal our thunder, narrow the gap, and pretend they can change too.  Most of those who are in power at that fossilized bureaucracy of their's will sniff at that idea, and continue on their current course, unable to change.

No, there is no risk of them stealing our plan and using it as a weapon against us.

As usual, let's have some discussions.  For the reasons outlined above, it is OK to post your feedback here, rather that send it in a private email to me.  However, if you aren't comfortable with that, keep sending me your private emails.  I will publish them here in the Blog only if you give prior written permission for me to do so.

10 Steps to Success

In yesterday's post, we exposed the hypocrisy of the claims of continuous improvement by the Canadian Supply Management System for chicken.  We suggested that known lies or incompetency were the root causes.

While the cause may now be exposed, that doesn't create a solution.  That is the subject of today's post.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950

There are 10 recommended steps to implementing a chicken solution for Canadians, as follows:

1. Despair   The first step to making a change is to build the pain and frustration to the breaking point, beyond which people are both unwilling and unable to continue.  We're not there yet, but the Canadian Supply Management System for Chicken has been doing an excellent job of pissing people off, so that moment of despair will soon be here.
   
   On this step, Small Flock Poultry Farmers and the Supply Management System are in total agreement, and working together.  This humble Blog is helping accelerate the completion of this step.  When we finally get there, we will be adequately prepared for Step 2.
    
2. Aware   That's the purpose of this Blog, to help build awareness.  We're a little ahead of our time, but it takes a while to write all the necessary articles, build an audience, and convince people there is a better way. 
   
   

   "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." – George Orwell

   
   As bad as the current system is, people will not jump from their pain, and into a vacuum.  We must have a viable alternative.  That is what awareness is all about, building that alternative.  Secondly, it helps to have awareness (or at least some doubt) in the minds of a few individuals within the Supply Management System.  Previously, they have been convinced they were doing "God's Work".  Being aware of the damage they have been causing helps our cause.
3. Care   To get the changes we need, people have to care about the pain, frustration, and lost opportunities created by the current Supply Management System. Arrogance and indifference are typical, so we'll assume it exists in everybody within the Supply Management System until proven otherwise.
   
   

   “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has....Never depend upon institutions or government to solve any problem. All social movements are founded by, guided by, motivated and seen through by the passion of individuals.” Margaret Mead

   
   
   We need individuals who are committed to the cause.  We need individuals who are willing to disclose their sorrow.  We need to build empathy in the people who can propose, and those who can approve the proposals.  We ourselves need to care, rather than accepting our current lot in life.
4. Perseverance   This isn't going to be easy.  It won't happen over night.  It will take dedication to the cause.  We need to support each other through these difficult times.  We must be willing to take up the slack when our neighbour's strength and resolve reach their limits.  We must appreciate the efforts of all, no matter how big or small; it all helps.  We must never give up.
   
   Some quotes from Sir Winston Churchill (Great Britan's Prime Minister during World War II):
   
   • Never, never, never give up.
   • If you're going through hell, keep going.
   • As long as we have faith in our own cause and an unconquerable will to win, victory will not be denied us.
5. Goal   We have to have a clear goal, something that is motivational.  One of the most impressive goals in my lifetime was the Moon Landing Goal.  It meets all the requirements of SMART (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Timely).
   

   "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth."   President J.F. Kennedy, State of the Union Address to U.S. Congress, May 25, 1961.

   Our struggle is just as big, just as important, and just as overwhelming.  We therefore need a Goal that is just as good as what President Kennedy gave for the Moon Landing project.  I therefore propose:
   

   Before the end of 2015, Canada's Supply Management system will be transformed so as to: encourage exports; operate in a fair, stable, and sustainable manner; and supply Canadians with the best produce at the lowest retail cost.

6. Hard Work   This won't be easy.  We have no money to pay people.  We will do it as self-motivated volunteers, or it won't happen.  Frustration is to be expected.  Whenever we try something new, we will feel frustration and unease.  We must be prepared for these feelings, and support each other through them.
7. Skills   We will need to be self-reliant.  Fortunately many of us have some prior experience in life.  We have friends and families who have resources and talents that we can benefit from.  We will have to invent some things as we go along, for the solution or the skill doesn't yet exist within our grasp.
8. Teamwork   Few people choose to join a losing team.  Many will join a team that respects and honors its team members, even if they face difficult challenges ahead.
   
   One finger, when used alone, is easily hurt or overcome.  When we use all five fingers together as a hand, our hand isn't 5 times stronger than an individual finger, it's more than 30 times stronger.  That's the synergy of teamwork.  We need to find like-minded people, then choose to work co-cooperatively with those who are trustworthy.
9. Education   We need to educate ourselves, as well as all those around us.  This is a complicated issue, touching most people.  It's probably too complex for any one person to fully understand all the issues, players, and skills.  Through teamwork and education we can fully understand the opposing forces, then our alternatives, and define a path to our new future that will work.  We need to seek out the solutions that have worked before for others, then adapt them to fit our struggle.  We must understand both the how, and the why.
10. Leadership  We need a Leader, and we need to provide leadership for most others.  Great Leaders don't do great things, they inspire others to do great things.  In that way, they multiply their effectiveness dozens to thousands of times.
    
    

    "A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus."    Martin Luther King

    
    

    "The transformation required will not take place in the absence of leaders. It will not be spontaneous."
    The New Economics, Dr. W. Edwards Deming (1900 - 1993)