The Milk Producer - July 2010 - (Page 46)

Story and Photo By Bill Dimmick Truly grateful Lew Dunk lauds the early leaders who brought fairness to the milk marketing system trace of smouldering resentment remains in Lew Dunk’s voice when he recalls how industrial milk shippers could be cheated before the advent of orderly marketing in Ontario’s dairy industry. In 1956, he and his wife, Isobel, had purchased their first farm as Lew began his lifelong dream of breeding top Holsteins. Local cheese factories provided the only available market for milk in their part of Northumberland County. “In our area, cheese factories took all the milk in summer when the cows were on grass,” Lew explains. “The cheesemaker weighed and tested the milk for fat content. One cheque was paid for 2.7 per cent fat.” That’s what irked him. A purebred Holstein breeder, Lew had enrolled his herd—just 10 animals when he started—in the old Record of Performance (ROP) milk recording program. “Our lowest cow on ROP that month was 4.0 per cent,” he says. Yet there was nothing Lew or any other industrial shipper could do about the suspicious butterfat test results the cheese factory used as a basis for payment. “At that time, after milk left the farmgate, farmers had no control,” he says. The cheese factories shut down for winter until the spring flush of milk from cows turned out to pasture. Since Lew was intent on building a purebred Holstein herd, he had to milk year-round to maintain ROP records for his cows. That meant shipping to a local creamery during 46 | July 2010 | MilkPRODUCER A Lew and Isobel Dunk built a successful farm under supply management. winter months. As with the cheese factory, he had no idea of how much he might be paid. “You were at their mercy,” he says. Lew’s passion for raising purebreds proved to be the salvation of their farming operation in those early years. Selling cattle into a growing international market for top dairy animals kept his family afloat. “We raised purebreds and sold them into the export market. We wouldn’t have survived the first 10 years without this income,” he says. By 1965, the late William Stewart, Ontario’s agriculture minister back then, had shepherded the Milk Act through the provincial legislature to create the Ontario Milk Marketing Board, forerunner of today’s Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO). Orderly marketing would change everything—although board control of butterfat testing to ensure processors paid industrial shippers fairly was still a few years away. Winds of change While the winds of change promised a fairer economic climate for shippers like Lew, leaders of the new board faced a big challenge to convince many dairy farmers the new marketing system would work. Lew remem-

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Milk Producer - July 2010

The Milk Producer - July 2010
Contents
Editor's Notes
DFO Chair’s Message
Diary Update
DFO
National Policy
DFC Promotion
Thrill of the Grill
Farm Finance
Foundation for Our Future
Agriculture Minister’s Message
General Manger’s Message
Overview
Then and Now:
Notable Quotes:
Grant Smith
Gordon Coukell
Peter Oosterhoff
Vera Mitchell
Bill Simpson
Lew Dunk
Albert Gauthier
Gary Marshall
Stuart Steckle
Tom Kane
Pat McManus
Research
Applied Science
Ruminations
Markets
New’N’Noted
Back Forty

The Milk Producer - July 2010