Farmscape for August 7, 2017

The President of the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance is confident, once fully implemented, the trade agreement involving Canada and the European Union will be worth as much as one and a half billion dollars annually.
September 21 has been set as the implementation date for the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement involving Canada and the European Union.
Brian Innes, the President of the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, acknowledges unresolved issues on the beef and pork side related to food safety recognitions and on the crop side related to crop protection products and biotechnology traits will delay full access to Europe for Canadian agri-food exports, but the agreement holds tremendous promise.

Clip-Brian Innes-Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance:
It's very positive that, after many years, we're finally seeing this agreement between Canada and Europe come into force.
For CAFTA members, and this represents most of our trade dependant export agriculture in Canada, we estimate that the total amount of increased exports that this agreement with Europe will bring is about one and a half billion dollars when it's fully implemented.
That's a pretty big number when you think about all the opportunity that we'll have with better access by getting rid of tariffs, having better control over some of the non-tariff measures as well.
One and a half billion dollars is a pretty big number,
We don't see that coming day one, on September 22 by any means but over time this could be very significant for Canadian agriculture.

Innes says on day one some of the tariffs on canola oil and quotas on low protein wheat will be addressed allowing us to export right away but access for beef and pork will have some difficulties, primarily related to food safety recognitions.
He says inconsistencies with the way Europe looks at certain provisions will means not all of our beef and pork processing plants will meet European requirements on day one and there are concerns related to crop protection products and biotechnology traits that we include in our canola, our corn and our soybeans.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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