"The supply management system is designed to keep foreign products out and prices up."

Yes, it's designed to keep foreign products out. But it's designed to keep prices fair: fair to farmers and affordable to consumers.

Consistently at the Globe, any article on supply management (SM) is responded to by readers who claim that dairy farmers are millionaires who are laughing all the way to the bank at the expense of welfare moms who can't afford to buy milk, butter or cheese.

Supply management is not perfect. But as Churchill said with respect to democracy, it's better than the alternatives. There are still a few old-timers who milked prior to SM and remember the erratic, uncoordinated ups & downs that they had to endure. Local dairies can only process so much milk and when that volume was approached the dairies could and did bid farmers' prices down. 

Apart from baby chicks there are few farm products that are as time-sensitive as raw milk. Famers were faced with take-it-or-leave it.