By Bruce Cochrane.
Agri-Food Economic Systems suggests the next Federal Provincial Territorial Agri-Food Policy Agreement will need to be responsive to changes in trade.
An Agri-Food Policy Note, released by Agri-Food Economic Systems, challenges governments and the agri-food sectors to go broader and deeper into discussions on the successor to Growing Forward-2, which expires in 2018.
Dr. Al Mussell, the Research Lead with Agri-Food Economic Systems, notes Canada has signed the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the EU and the 12 nation Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.
Dr. Al Mussell-Agri-Food Economic Systems:
Thinking about western Canada somewhat specifically as well as the pork industry, the grain industry as well, we're looking at these trade agreements to provide growth for our industries.
On one hand, if these roll out as planned, as hoped for, one of our challenges will be building capacity to appropriately respond and make full use of the kind of market access that we obtained.
We haven't seen indication that, in the five year agreement that's being negotiated to come in in 2018, that that's really been given a whole lot of attention.
Conversely, if these trade agreements end up not coming to fruition and we know the rough ride the TPP is being given in the U.S. presidential election and similarly, with the Brexit vote in the UK, the uncertainty that creates around whether or not the CETA agreement with the EU will ever come into place, then we need to be thinking about what sort of policies we're going to have in place to facilitate growth in our ag and food industries if we can't get it from those expansions through trade.
Dr. Mussell says we have a year and a half to address these challenges and, while time is limited, a lot can be accomplished over that period.
Source: Farmscape