Chicken Farmers of Nova Scotia Celebrate 40th Anniversary

Surviving original board member and Industry reflect on benefits of implementing organized marketing

Nova Scotia chicken farmers have seen their industry progress during the last 40 years from a “quite precarious” position to one of stability, where most producers are “making quite a comfortable living,” observed veteran grower Eric Meek.

Joining forces to pool their energies and resources to form a provincial marketing board and eventually supporting formation of a national agency were the keys to success, he said.

Meek was recognized as the last surviving member of Nova Scotia’s original marketing board, established in 1966, when Chicken Farmers of Nova Scotia gathered in November to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their association.

The gala evening brought together growers from across the province, as well as government and national industry representatives.

Ron O’Connor, vice-chairman of the National Farm Products Council, said today’s growers “owe a great deal of debt to those who sat around the table originally and envisaged the system that is in place today.”

Dave Davies, chair of the Nova Scotia Natural Products Marketing Council, said the province’s poultry industry is the envy of a lot of provinces and the industry here “is in good hands, with a large number of young producers.”

David Fuller, the Nova Scotia grower who has been Chairman of the Chicken Farmers of Canada since 1999, said that because of the strength of the organization here, producers “have built a Canadian success story. For many years to come, we have a solid foundation.”

Organized marketing of poultry products in Nova Scotia started on January 29, 1966, when Gordon Gates invited Donald Newcombe, Donald Archibald, Howard Fuller, Garnet Wittenberg and John deGraaf to meet at his home to explore what could be done to aid the province’s hard-pressed chicken industry. Returns were poor, and many producers were considering leaving the industry.

At a subsequent meeting that spring of all chicken growers in Nova Scotia, an association was formed with an objective to use their collective energies and talents for the good of all phases of the industry.

The enthusiastic response of growers and long hours of study resulted in the association asking the provincial government for permission to form a local marketing board, which was established that summer.

The six founding board members, including Meek, Gates, Fuller, Newcombe, Cy Steele, and Kermit Young, held the first meeting of the Nova Scotia Broiler Chicken Marketing Board on August 2, 1966, at Port Williams Community Centre. Gates was elected chairman and James A. Watson was appointed manager.

The Nova Scotia board became the third such provincial agency in Canada, following British Columbia and Ontario.

The program for the anniversary gala stated that “the first challenge of the board was to draft suitable regulations for board operations. There was considerable opposition to a board from some processors, and many meetings were held to resolve their differences.’’

The board used the facilities of the Port Williams Agencies until moving into its own office facility and hiring a full-time manager in 1971.  A year later, it revised and strengthened its marketing plan. In 1977, the quota system was modernized and improved by basing it on a poundage quota, rather than a per-bird quota.

As more provincial boards were formed, the push for a national agency grew and the Canadian Chicken Marketing Agency, now Chicken Farmers of Canada, was formed in 1978, with Eric Meek as its first chairman. In addition to Meek and current chairman David Fuller, Nova Scotia’s Dan Lynch headed the national agency in the mid-1980s.

As the industry evolved in Nova Scotia, the agency changed its name to the Nova Scotia Chicken Marketing Board, later to the Nova Scotia Chicken Producers Board, and is now known as Chicken Farmers of Nova Scotia.