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Dairy industry remains concerned over CUSMA

The Dairy Farmers of Canada have mixed feelings about this week's funding announcement from Ottawa. 

Federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau re-confirmed Ottawa's commitment to compensate the Supply Management sector over the Canada, U-S, Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).

Bibeau says $1.7 billion dollars will be shared by dairy, poultry, egg producers and processors impacted by CUSMA.

That money will be delivered through direct payments and investment programs.

David Wiens, Vice President of the Dairy Farmers of Canada says they would just as soon not have had to give up any markets at all.

"Because, of course, this trade deal goes on into, you know, it's a continuous thing. So we'll never get those markets back that we lost. But certainly, we appreciate the the recognition of damage done in this trade deal by our federal government."

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Selling Hay for 40 Years: Fritz Trauttmansdorff, Dunlea Farms

Video: Selling Hay for 40 Years: Fritz Trauttmansdorff, Dunlea Farms



Fritz Trauttmansdorff came to Canada from Austria in 1980, bought a 45-cow dairy farm at Jerseyville, and within two years had more hay than he knew what to do with. He sold the quota in 1986, went debt-free, and built a hay business that has kept some of the same customers for forty years. Today Dunlea Farms runs about 2,500 acres — roughly 600 of it hay, the rest IP soybeans and grain corn — and Fritz makes the case that hay isn't the crop you grow when grain doesn't work. It's the crop that makes the grain work.

"If you grow corn, soybeans and wheat, you're on a three-wheeler. If you put hay in the rotation, you're on a four-wheeler."

WHAT WE COVER • Why the hay market moves independently of the Chicago Board — and what that does for farm-level risk
• The real cost of a mistake: five bushels in grain, versus the whole crop in hay
• Getting a second job out of the same iron — planting tractors that mow all summer, tillage tractors that bale
• How a grain farmer can get hay into the rotation without buying a single piece of hay equipment
• Drilling Timothy in the fall and double-cropping soybeans into it the next June
• What it actually takes to go all-in: roughly 500 acres, good sheds, and a baler you didn't buy used
• Local, regional and international hay markets — and choosing which one you're building for
• Why 40-year customer relationships are the asset, not the equipment