@yamoon here is a cliff note version if you don’t want to bother looking back to the multiple times it’s been covered in the past.
In 1970 or so there was a crisis in the dairy industry in North America. Two countries took too drastically different approaches to dealing with the issue.
Canada adopted a quota system where the amount of milk on the market was controlled in order to keep prices high enough for the farmer to make a living while still low enough for the customer to afford. This quota is measured by kgs of butterfat with one kg being roughly equal to the amount of milk produced by one cow per day. This quota system gives a monetary value to the amount of market share controlled by each farmer that they can leverage, borrow against and ultimately sell when they choose to retire.
America instead of instituting a quota system directly subsidized dairy production, some years up to 73% of dairy returns are dirict government subsidies. These subsidies routinely run into the billions of dollars annually.
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Now on to trade , Canada as part of a trade agreement allows a set amount of u.s. dairy onto the Canadian market and only after that threshold is met is there then a 215% tariff applied.
98% of Canadian dairy farms are still family owned they make a moderate living in a difficult sector. The average size of a Canadian dairy herd is 77 cows. It costs currently 28000 dollars to add 1 kg of quota or 1 cow to the farm.
How can Canadian dairy farmers operating within a carefully managed sector compete with American producers who have no restrictions and routinely overproduce for government funding?
The only actual way to fairly trade dairy would be for the u.s. to stop subsidies which would have a domino effect where prices wouldn’t support the size of u.s. diary herds leading to mass beefing out of herds which would then short supply on the domestic market increasing price to a level sustainable for the farmer with his smaller herd. Thus making it unnecessary to offshore milk as there would no longer be a surplus of u.s. milk on the market.