About Le Producteur de lait québécois

Le Producteur de lait québécois

Overview

Le Producteur de lait québécois is a French-language trade magazine written for the dairy farmers of Quebec. Published by Les Producteurs de lait du Québec (PLQ), the provincial organisation that represents the province's milk producers and markets their milk collectively, the magazine is the print voice of that organisation: a working tool for farm businesses as much as a membership bulletin. Its pages mix technical advice on herd management, feeding and milk quality with farm profiles, research results, market analysis and the policy positions of the PLQ, the body that speaks for Quebec dairy producers in defence of supply management and collective marketing.

The magazine publishes ten issues a year. Its September 2026 masthead gives a print run of 7,477 copies, a figure published by the PLQ itself, and lists Yanick Grégoire as the magazine's person in charge at the PLQ and editor-in-chief, with Ariane Desrochers as director of publications and sales and Audrey Gendron as editorial secretary. The magazine is based at the PLQ's head office in Longueuil, at 555 boulevard Roland-Therrien, the building known as the Maison de l'UPA, and it carries the ISSN 0228-1686. Although the title's assigned web address is the PLQ's main site, lait.org, the magazine itself lives online at revue.lait.org, where complete issues are posted as PDF files alongside individual articles.

History

The Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) catalogue record for Le producteur de lait québécois shows the magazine beginning with volume 1, number 1, in September 1980, and the magazine's own masthead records its legal deposit in the third quarter of 1980. The catalogue lists its publishers over time as the Office des producteurs de lait du Québec in Montreal and then, in Longueuil, the Fédération des producteurs de lait du Québec and its successor, Les Producteurs de lait du Québec. The title has therefore followed the organisational history of Quebec's dairy producers for more than four decades.

That history turned on two dates. In 1983, Quebec's milk producers united in the Fédération des producteurs de lait du Québec (FPLQ), a federation of fourteen regional syndicates that brought together the two earlier federations — one for fluid-milk producers, dating to 1970, and one for industrial-milk producers, dating to 1966. Then, on 1 May 2014, the federation and its fourteen syndicates dissolved into a single legal entity, Les Producteurs de lait du Québec, in which every producer is a direct member. The magazine's publisher line changed with the organisation, but the title itself continued without interruption.

The magazine's role inside the organisation is longstanding. The FPLQ's 2003 annual report described producing the revue as one of the principal mandates of its communications directorate, and noted that the federation's annual production report was published as a special issue of the magazine so that every subscribing producer could read it. Publishing the magazine remains a communications function of the PLQ today.

Content and Coverage

The editorial formula is practical and sector-specific. Technical content dominates: articles on milk quality rules and what happens when a load of milk is contaminated, on feeding and forage, on genetics and herd health, and on the proAction program, the dairy industry's on-farm quality and sustainability assurance scheme. A long-running strand of content comes from Lactanet, the milk-recording and herd-data organisation, whose columns translate research on topics such as dry-period length, milk components and methane estimation into farm-level decisions. Contributors listed in the masthead include Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the CIAQ artificial-insemination centre, the CRAAQ agrifood research centre, the veterinary faculty of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval's agriculture and food sciences faculty, Lactanet, Novalait, the Quebec agriculture ministry (MAPAQ) and the Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA), which gives the magazine the character of a shared technical bulletin for the whole Quebec dairy research network.

Alongside the technical material, the Reportage pages profile individual farms and people: award-winning producers in the Lait'xcellent milk-quality contest, which the PLQ has organised since 1987 and whose provincial gold, silver and bronze farms are featured each year; new regional directors; and producers building public profiles of their own. Editorials signed by the PLQ president — Daniel Gobeil in the 2025 and 2026 issues held for this profile — set out the organisation's positions on supply management, trade agreements and relations with the United States, and are excerpted from speeches to the annual general meeting. Coverage of the PLQ's own governance, its annual meeting and its regional structures rounds out a magazine that is deliberately inward-facing: it is written for members, about their industry.

Audience and Reach

The readership is Quebec's dairy farm population. The PLQ states on its own site that it represents 9,281 milk producers working on 4,087 farms; those producers and their families, employees and advisers form the magazine's core audience. The masthead print run of 7,477 copies, published by the PLQ itself in its 2026 issues, is consistent with a controlled distribution to farm businesses across the province's dairy regions, supplemented by paid subscriptions. The magazine's own subscription rates, printed in the masthead, are $19.55 for one year, $29.32 for two years and $39.09 for three years.

No independently audited circulation figure for the magazine is published, and none is claimed here beyond the publisher's own stated print run. The wider sector the magazine serves is substantial: the PLQ states that its member farms deliver some 3.60 billion litres of milk, with farm-gate receipts of about $3.61 billion, and that dairy production and processing generate tens of thousands of jobs in Quebec. Those are the organisation's figures for the industry it represents, offered here as context for the magazine's audience rather than as readership data.

Digital Presence

The magazine's digital home is revue.lait.org, a dedicated site distinct from the PLQ's corporate site at lait.org. Full issues are posted there as downloadable PDFs — the September 2026 issue, the July/August 2026 issue and the May and June 2026 issues were all available when this profile was prepared — and individual articles are published in web form under categories such as Actualité (news), Reportage (features) and Lactanet (technical columns). The web archive of features reaches back through 2025 and 2026 with dated stories on the Lait'xcellent winners, farm profiles and PLQ governance, showing a title that now publishes to the web between print issues rather than simply archiving paper editions.

The parent organisation maintains the broader digital footprint: lait.org carries PLQ news, press releases, publications and annual reports, and the PLQ is active on Facebook and Instagram. The magazine's advertising sales and subscription administration run through the same Longueuil publishing office as La Terre de chez nous, the UPA's farm newspaper — the masthead lists the sales team at pub@laterre.ca and subscriptions at abonnement@laterre.ca — an arrangement that reflects how Quebec's farm organisations pool their publishing services.

Ownership and Organisation

Le Producteur de lait québécois is owned and published by Les Producteurs de lait du Québec, a democratic, member-governed organisation affiliated with the Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA). The PLQ is administered by a board made up of the chairs of its fourteen regional councils, and its orientations are set by the members' annual general meeting. The organisation's mission is to represent Quebec milk producers and to market their milk collectively under Canada's supply-management system, negotiating transport and processing conditions on their behalf.

Editorially, the magazine is produced by a small in-house team supported by outside production services. The 2026 mastheads name Ariane Desrochers as director of publications and sales (Charles Couture held the equivalent role in 2025), Yanick Grégoire as editor-in-chief, and Audrey Gendron as editorial secretary and a frequent cover photographer. Graphic design is credited to Groupe Charest inc., linguistic revision to Marie LeBlanc, prepress work to La Terre de chez nous, and printing to Imprimerie FL Web. The result is a magazine produced inside a farm organisation rather than by a commercial publisher, which explains both its technical depth and its close alignment with the PLQ's policy positions.

Contact and Availability

Le Producteur de lait québécois is published ten times a year in French and is available by subscription at the rates printed in its masthead — $19.55 for one year, $29.32 for two years and $39.09 for three years — with subscriptions administered through the Longueuil office (telephone 450 679-8483, extension 7274). Correspondence goes to Le Producteur de lait québécois, 555, boulevard Roland-Therrien, bureau 415, Longueuil (Québec) J4H 4G3; the magazine lists the telephone number 438 315-9131, fax 450 679-5899 and the PLQ's general email plq@lait.qc.ca. The revue site's own footer gives the telephone number 833 470-5248. Current and recent issues can be read in full, free of charge, at revue.lait.org, and the publisher's main site is lait.org.