Farmscape for April 3, 2017

The Chair of the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board says Saskatchewan's pork producers are fully supportive of the provincial government in its opposition to the imposition of a carbon tax.
Last September the federal government warned, any province that fails to have a carbon pricing system in place by the end of 2018 will have one imposed.
Saskatchewan Pork Development Board Chair Florian Possberg says the Trump administration has changed the policy in the U.S. from supporting a carbon tax  to being opposed to a carbon and, if Canada has such a tax and the U.S. doesn't, it will put Canadian agriculture at a disadvantage.

Clip-Florian Possberg-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board:
We certainly use energy to produce food, whether it's the crops that go into feeding our livestock or the heat that we use to heat our barns or the fuel that we use to bring in inputs and send our product to market.
A carbon tax is definitely going to be an added cost to doing business and that's worrying because we have to compete in a global market where it's very competitive.
Our Premier Wall has stated flatly that he is absolutely opposed to a carbon tax and the province is going to do anything possible to fight having to impose a carbon tax on the citizens of Saskatchewan.
Our industry very much supports that position.
We agree with the premier that we don't see anything positive out of carbon tax and so we very much support the province's position on fighting the implementation of a carbon tax.

Possberg notes carbon taxes really aren't very effective in terms of reducing greenhouse gases.
He says there's no reason to believe creating an additional  bureaucracy with costs involved and no foreseeable environmental benefit can be positive for the agriculture industry.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork