Agricultural History Review, Volume 68 Part 2 (2020), pp. 286–306

Supply management has come under enhanced scrutiny in recent years because it operates on principles contrary to the guiding philosophies of neoliberalism that currently inform most industrialized nations’ decisions regarding economic development. This article demonstrates why Canada chose to adopt a system of greater regulation, rather than less, in the egg farming industry by examining the events leading to supply management’s implementation on a national scale in 1972. It argues that previous efforts to improve egg farmer income and industry stability through subsidies, government-purchasing programs, and increased trade were ineffective and often intensified the fundamental issue of overpro-duction. It was not until postwar agricultural policy makers and farm advocates in Canada turned to organized marketing, specifically controlled production, that an era of greater stability began. Greater regulation resulted in the continuation of a cross-country egg farming industry that has survived into the twenty-first century. 

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