I have no doubt the official believed what he was saying. All producers would be telling him that, and folks don’t share their books, good, bad or so-so. Plus bankers won’t talk. Farm Credit Canada (FCC) gives a sunny report as well. The number of producers paying interest only on loans – with interest as low as it can go – is not revealed.

So, they tell the federal minister of agriculture that hardly any loans are in trouble, and none in dairy. Ag Minister Gerry Ritz will repeat that at the Dairy Farmers of Canada annual meeting in February. It’s written into the same speech dusted off every year.

Those who know, or have a sense of the data, for some reason, feel compelled to keep perpetuating that myth. Last year someone in a position to know whispered that more Ontario dairy farms are facing the Farm Debt Review Board. A fellow reporter made the calls. No, she was told. There are none. She chastened me in an email about the quality of my sources. There was no story.

Financial trouble looming on dairy farms? No, no, no. That’s in the United States.

Well, in October and November I ran a dairy farm under a court appointed receivership, that had, prior to that, gone through the Farm Debt Review Board. The owner still had his knickers in a twist because it had been done in English only. The board didn’t, of course, resolve things, which is why I was there.

As for the three other operations east of Ottawa, where the receivership folks had been put on alert, I’m not privy to the details.

But Eastern Ontario producers can take comfort that the borrowing numbers down here are a mere shadow compared to the west.

Last week at the Central Ontario Agriculture Conference in Barrie, a fellow dairy speaker shared with me the numbers that ongoing operations are selling for and where quota can be purchased well above the exchange capped price of $25,000 a kilo/cow.

With land in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley selling for $45,000 an acre and quota at $40,000 a kilo, young folks from these operations are heading to Eastern Ontario for farms. They have the unique opportunity to provide their parents with a nest egg and they can invest in a nice farm.

With Western Ontario land over $16,000 an acre and up to $40,000 for the on-farm quota, the total investment per cow, lock, stock and barrel, is now at $70,000 a cow in some confirmed sales, the speaker told me.

Is that sustainable? If there is to be an intergenerational transfer – imagine – with these numbers, then the son or daughter will need a $35,000-a-cow gift from the parents, to even have a remote chance of making it. I knew FCC had increased financing that allowed for a debt burden of $30,000 a cow, but with this new-found equity fuelled by western investment, I’m sure they’ll stretch for another five Gs.

At $35,000 a cow, what will happen when interest rates go up, and they will because they can’t go down and they never stay the same? What happens when something dramatic happens in the world that affects the industry and has nothing to do with your top management – and it will someday? Or what happens when tragedy strikes, and it will because we all die? The person holding that kind of debt will, in all likelihood, go broke.

Not officially of course, if there are more deep-pocketed investors to take over the operation.

Meantime, the "free" quota program to new producers is being discontinued because it was just enough rope to hang themselves. Other youth are forsaking dairy. They know, in their working lives, they have to make real money based on sound economics.