Farmscape for July 3, 2017

The Chair of the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board suggests the pending renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement could further enhance the movement of pork products back and forth across the Canada U.S. border.
Canada's pork industry has been watching closely developments in the U.S. related to the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Saskatchewan Pork Development Board Chair Florian Possberg observes there's a growing appreciation in the U.S. of the need for agricultural trade the benefits of the free trade zone that NAFTA created.

Clip-Florian Possberg-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board:
The United States and Canada are major two way traders in the pork industry.
There's a lot of pork from the United States that comes into Canada and there's an equal amount or more that goes south of the border into the U.S. and there's a lot of live animals from Canada that also go into the U.S. so we're really hoping that we continue to have open borders in terms of the trade.
In fact it could be enhanced.
Some of the phytosanitary requirements to move products across border is not as free of bureaucracy as it should be so, if anything, we're hoping that the discussions will actually lead to a more friendly trade agreement in terms of all levels, CFIA and USDA agreeing that either inspection is sufficient for both counties and those sorts of things.
Of course we want to maintain our tariff free status, we want to maintain open borders and, optimistically, we'd like to see some of the bureaucratic issues go away as well.

Possberg says the recent change in the tone of comments related to the North American Free Trade Agreement by U.S. politicians is cause for optimism.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork