Ian Cumming, writing in the upcoming edition of Ontario Dairy Farmer magazine, describes in detail the insane debt levels of Canadian dairy farmers, ensuring that Canadian consumers will be on the getting screwed hook forever…and ensuring that Trump’s favourite sore spot – Canada’s protectionist dairy market – will remain in place for just as long.
THE U.S. NORTHEAST Dairy Farm Survey released in July 2025 by CoBank and Farm Credit East (US) had some concerns about the increasing debt per cow in New York and New England. It uses data from the year before and projects it into the present. It took 29 years to go from $2,000 (US) to $3,000 debt per cow, then eight years to go to $4,000 average debt per cow, and then another six years to reach $6,000 debt a cow in 2021. The 2024 survey is at $6,514 debt per cow. Intermediate and long-term debt on these farms averaged $5,526 per cow.
A recently published report in Canada on the Australian dairy industry, based on an average size per farm of over 500 cows and total debt per farm as cited, showed an average $1,522 debt per cow. Australian currency is roughly equal in value to the Canadian dollar. It is a country where cattle housing is not required.
In late August, 2024, in St Liborie, Quebec at the Outdoor Farm Show, three respected bankers standing side by side, lending from Ormstown to St Hyacinthe, were asked by Ontario Farmer what their average debt per cow was, with a cow’s production being 1.5 kilos of quota. They all agreed after a brief internal discussion that their average debt was $55,000 per cow…A 2024 dairy farm management club report, which comes out annually, detailing voluntary herd numbers in eastern Ontario and western Quebec, put their average debt at $33,000 per kilo of quota. Translated to the American level of production, that comes to an average of $52,800/cow debt, no matter the herd size.
And yet Trump did it.