The role of marketing boards in the industrialization of the Canadian agricultural system

Abstract

Agricultural product marketing boards have emerged as a significant and somewhat unique institutional framework within the Canadian agricultural system during the last 70 years. That period coincides with the increasing industrialization of the system with respect to both its agribusiness and farm (production) sectors. The paper explores the relationships between the process of industrialization and the particular response represented by marketing board arrangements. The underlying premise is of a causal relationship, but one complicated by the changing goals of, and relationships between, the participants. Although marketing boards are seen as producer-initiated, at each stage their form and functions have been strongly influenced by the attitudes of agribusiness and the level of government involvement. Industrialization affecting agribusiness is seen as the initial stimulus to farmer actions which culminated in the Prairie Wheat Pools and the Canadian Wheat Board. Further consolidation by agribusiness, together with pressures on governments during the Depression, influenced the wave of provincial marketing boards, established during the early stages of farm-level industrialization. Most recently, since 1960, the latest stages of industrialization which have emphasized large scale, oligopolistic and multinational agribusiness, and the emergence of a minority of highly capitalized and specialized farm enterprises, has also seen the application of supply management, a more rigorous form of marketing control, to the dairy and poultry sectors. At present, however, marketing arrangements are under pressure from international trade agreements and from elements of multinational agri- business.