Goat dairy producer Monique Spanjers.
Nelson Zandbergen
Farmers Forum
OTTAWA — Just as they feared, Ontario’s export-dependent goat milk producers have been caught up in the ongoing Canada-U.S. trade dispute. When the Trump White House slapped a 50 % tariff on Canadian dairy last month, goat cheese also fell within the targeted product list.
U.S. President Donald Trump has railed against Canadian dairy since his return to power last year. Goat milk farmers had hoped to avoid the fallout because they are free-market based and aren’t supply-managed like their cow-milking brethren.
Half of the output of Ontario’s 200 goat milk producers is exported to the U.S., mostly in the form of cheese. That makes goat dairy farmers uniquely vulnerable to trade disruptions compared to bovine dairy farmers who export less than 3 % of their output to the U.S., based on figures from the Dairy Processors Association of Canada.
“We are kind of collateral damage for a system (supply management) that we don’t have ourselves,” London-area goat dairy farmer Monique Spanjers told Farmers Forum.
Spanjers noted that her small independent group of producers has so far seen no change in price or volume because the group doesn’t export to the U.S.
Kevin Weaver, goat industry manager at Gay Lea, one of the two dominant goat dairy co-ops in the province, didn’t directly answer if he expected an impact on price and volume collected from farmers because of the U.S. tariff.
“Milk continues to flow, on a daily basis. We really don’t really understand the full impact,” Weaver said. “We’ve got a lot of … guesses that we’re working on.”
In a joint statement, Gay Lea and Ontario Goat Co-operative — the other big player in the sector — warned that “prolonged disruption could put farm income, processing capacity, and rural jobs at risk.” The co-ops, which count a combined 160 producers, are lobbying the federal and provincial governments for temporary producer support.
“There’s no backup system for us,” Monique Spanjers observed. “The cow farmers are usually compensated at some point. But when they (the policymakers) start compensating, then all of a sudden they say, ‘Yeah, but you’re a goat farmer… you don’t have supply management. So you’re not hurt by this.’”
This vulnerability and lack of clout has intensified calls for a provincial goat milk board. Following a producer vote approving the board’s establishment last spring, Ontario’s new Agriculture Minister Sam Oosterhoff has instructed the Farm Products Marketing Commission to move to the next phase — a 45-day public comment period — of setting up the Dairy Goat Farmers of Ontario (DGFO). But some, including Spanjers, have criticized the need for the new board and the commission’s refusal to release the actual vote tally and participation rate.
