Fair and Free Trade Creates Win-Win for Producers of Food and Consumers of Food

The Executive Director of the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance says fair and free trade is a win for the farmers who produce food and a win for the consumers who buy that food.The Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance has developed a document which outlines eleven Principles for Sustainable and Fair Trade in the Agri-Food Sector, designed to provide the Canadian government an outline of the needs of Canadian agri-food exporters.

CAFTA Executive Director Michael Harvey says the intent was to provide a set of principles for Canada's trade negotiators to refer to when negotiating international trading agreements.

Quote-Michael Harvey-Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance:

The international rules-based trading system, which is so essential to Canada's agri-food trade exporters is working well, in the sense that international trade keeps increasing.It hasn't moved backwards, except for the blip of the pandemic.

The big technological changes of the last decade that have allowed trade to move forward, like digitalization, like larger container ships; these echnological changes have made it very unlikely to move international trade backward significantly but we're seeing a lot more risk in the system.

The reason we're seeing more risk is that countries are more and more referring to things outside of free trade when they make their decisions on their trade policy.Sometimes you'll see questions of national security or food security used in a way that can all of a sudden affect trade negatively.What we're talking about today, sustainability, we're seeing a risk that countries say that they're doing something for sustainability reasons and it's creating trade barriers that are counter productive.

Harvey says fair and free trade benefits the consumers who get access to higher quality food at a lower price and producers who are able to produce at the lowest cost possible a higher quality product and keep themselves in business.The Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance's Principles for Sustainable and Fair Trade in the Agri-Food Sector can be accessed at cafta.org.