By Bruce Cochrane
The chair of the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board says expanded free trade remains key to the viability of agriculture in Saskatchewan.
Representatives of the 12 nations involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership are expected to resume negotiations next month.
Sask Pork chair Florian Possberg says it's important to Saskatchewan's pork industry and its entire agriculture sector for Canada to continue to broaden its base for global trade.
Florian Possberg-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board:
We do have one federally inspected plant in Saskatchewan, Thunder Creek Pork in Moose Jaw, and it does export significant amounts of pork to Japan plus we also ship out of province a lot of hogs that go to Manitoba and Alberta that really depend on global markets and the Japanese market as well.
From that point of view, from pork production it's really critical, but I think for all of agriculture, whether it's our grains, or our beef, or other meats, these trade agreements are really important.
We've gotten involved in the European market through CETA that's in the pipeline. We know North American trade with the United States and Mexico is very beneficial to our agriculture and certainly the southeast Asia market is really a growing market, whether it's Vietnam or India, or China or any of those places, so continuing to work towards more free trade is really beneficial to what we do in our province, which is produce food at a very safe and economical manner.
Possberg stresses we are global traders and a successful TPP, with Canada involved, is very important.
Source: Farmscape