Farmscape for April 6, 2017

The research Lead with Agri-Food Economic Systems says, given the new trade challenges being created by the U.S., Canada's ability to deal with trade issues could be stretched thin.
Under the Donald Trump administration U.S. trade agreements, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, are being revisited.
Dr. Al Mussell, the Research Lead with Agri-Food Economic Systems, says it's entirely possible that part of the U.S. strategy is to initiate an overwhelming number of challenges.

Clip-Dr. Al Mussell-Agri-Food Economic Systems:
We can handle trade disputes.
We've had trade disputes with the United States before unfortunately and, given our resource base, if we had time to react I think we can analyze effectively, formulate a strategy and execute on that strategy and serve ourselves very well in terms of defending our interests.
When this all comes in a very condensed period of time, and of course we're only talking about the United States at this point.
We also have other considerations like the technical side of the CETA agreement with the EU and working out all of those various elements.
We also have a WTO Ministerial meeting that'll occur late this year which we expect that agricultural support will play a major part of.
We need to be preparing for all of those things too so the worry is that your capacity simply gets exhausted and it's hard to do a good job.

Dr. Mussell suggests Canada is going to have to be prepared for a chaotic environment.
He says the prospects of a NAFTA renegotiation and a border tax could affect currency valuations and interest rates which would have implications for discussions aimed at setting Canada's next agricultural policy framework.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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