Farmscape for June 27, 2017

The Chair of the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board says recent comments related to the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement are cause for renewed optimism.
Canada's Agriculture Minister met last week with his U.S. and Mexican counterparts to discuss trade.
Florian Possberg, the Chair of Sask Pork, says the United States and Canada are major two way traders in pork with a lot of U.S. pork coming into Canada, an equal amount or more going into the U.S. and a lot of live animals from Canada that go into the U.S.

Clip-Florian Possberg-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board:
At one point in the trade discussions there was talk about an import tax across the board on all items coming into the United States and the number thrown out there was a 20 percent tax.
If that were the case that would severely impede our ability to trade with the Americans and, quite frankly, because the Americans, there's a lot of industry there that depends on the supply of Canadian pork and live pigs, you would negatively impact their industry as well.
Our Minister of Agriculture, Minister MacAulay has met with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and the Mexican Agriculture Minister as well.
I think the Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue really appreciates that the need for agricultural trade between our three countries is really important and he restated that again when they met last week and that's very positive because, again, I think it's to the benefit of the Americans, the Mexicans and the Canadians if we can maintain the free trade zone that the NAFTA has benefitted us with.

Possberg says the pork industry is hoping for continued open borders and there is a possibility the renegotiation could lead to an even more friendly trade agreement.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork