So here we are. Surprised?

[Perry]

Most of you know my position regarding the movement and importation of honey bees into our province, and are probably also familiar with my stance and argument with the government against it. So here we have it, a glut, after all the risk thrown at the beekeeping industry to allow the big blueberry conglomerate to import hives, what do we find now? I have argued till I was blue in the face that the risk wasn't worth it. I have said repeatedly that the growers and the keepers were being told how to do their business by a large corp. with the ear of government, dictating policy.
Growers will suffer and along with the keepers. The only ones making out like a bandit is the buyer who must be having a hard time containing the grin at 30 cents a pound. But guess who the government has chosen to listen to?
Not the growers who will receive pennies for their crop and put fields to fallow, and not the keeps who will lose the income from pollination of those fields.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/blueberry-prices-glut-industry-fields-harvest-wild-producers-1.3734379

[Drbees]

I scrolled down the page and saw a headline about how the blueberry producers need more honey bees....

Seems kind of mixed up to me.

[neillsayers]

This has been a cyclical problem in the states basically since the beginning. Prices are good in a crop and everyone jumps on board, levering the farm and crops to the hilt. Then if they do a good job and the weather cooperates, there is a bumper crop and the farmer gets skinned.

[Perry]

I scrolled down the page and saw a headline about how the blueberry producers need more honey bees....

Seems kind of mixed up to me.

The only one who says we are always short of bees is the blueberry giant (also the largest keep) in order to justify bringing in bees from Ontario, despite the fact they are coming from an area known to have established Small Hive Beetle.
Mark my words, despite the glut and falling prices, they will import bees again next year as they do not want that border closed, ever, despite the risks it poses to any other keep. When pollination is your only interest, who cares what happens to keeps trying to harvest honey?

[neillsayers]

Perry,
Likely holds pollination fees down also?

[tecumseh]

a neillsayer snip...
'This has been a cyclical problem in the states basically since the beginning. Prices are good in a crop and everyone jumps on board, levering the farm and crops to the hilt. Then if they do a good job and the weather cooperates, there is a bumper crop and the farmer gets skinned./

my comment...
in economic jargon this is call the cob web theory of price equalibrum.  Basically the price never comes to a true equilibrum but the low prices in one year(Y1) generates a supply response in the year after of lower production and higher price.  the higher price in year 2 generates a supply response in year 3 that increases production but leads to lower prices.  essentially the price never drifts to some equilbrum price level.  the name cob web is derived from the kind of graph this price movement makes which looks a bit like a spider's cob web.

what many primary ag producers never seem to realize is the 'elasticity' of the supply and demand function are such that reducing supply actually increase farm income... basically the decrease in volume is being more than made up by an increase in price and of course things work just the opposite in the other direction.

and of course the marketing folks are always manipulating both ends of the production-consumer food chain for their own gain.  my hunch concerning ag production is the primary producer get to share in 1/3 of the upside price movement in a market and has to accept ALL of the downside price movement < you may notice that the price at the consumer lever never moves downward much unless someone is trying to dump perishables.  this at least to me is just another OBVIOUS flaw in what most folks think when they hear the phrase 'the law of supply and demand' (which any good economist will tell you first off is not a law at all... which is to say it ain't like some law of physics or chemistry).   

[neillsayers]

Tec,

 You are right about the farmer taking a beating for the market. A loaf of bread rarely changes while the wheat farmer sees ridiculous swings in price.
 When I was much younger I made some money by watching the feeder pig market. When the market bottomed I would stock up on replacement gilts and a boar. When their first pigs were ready for market the price was on an uptick, by the second or third farrowing the price was topped out, Then I would sell the whole herd and do something else. Did it twice, once the price stayed up for two more years, but I still doubled my money. Could have just as easily got skinned but I was blessed.