Q&A: Agriculture minister says tariffs and water main focus for upcoming year

The past year saw ups and downs for the province's agriculture sector, from a dwindling beef herd to narrowly avoiding the worst impacts of drought, to concerns sparked by incoming U.S. president Donald Trump's tariff threats. 

In December, CBC News spoke with Agriculture and Irrigation Minister RJ Sigurdson about how some of these issues played out, and what his office is focused on for the future. 

Here is some of that conversation, edited for length and clarity. 

Well first and foremost, I think it's been pretty clear the position of president-elect Trump and vice-president-elect JD Vance, their concern is border security. That's why I've called on the federal government to come to the table and work with what will be the new administration in the U.S. to address these issues so that we don't end up with retaliatory tariffs on agriculture or oil and gas, knowing how it will affect our economy.… But I've been pretty clear in stating, too, as well, president-elect Trump ran on a platform of affordability in the last election. We know that tariffs on agricultural products here in Canada will affect affordability in the U.S. So we continue to work on a strategy as proactive as possible to have conversations. 

It is. We understand that being too heavily dependent on one country as your major export [market] can be problematic when you come into times like this when tariffs do pop up. Alberta's farmers and ranchers produce the highest quality products in the world and they're highly sought after. And that's why we've started over in Asia to be able to have conversations on how we can continue to diversify our export markets. And more recently, I was down in Mexico to have the same conversations as well. [We've] met with the Port of Vancouver and are looking at how we continue to work with them hand in hand to increase how much we can export. So my focus as minister of agriculture is looking at every opportunity that we can to be able to continue to diversify and strengthen shipping routes to give more options to our farmers and ranchers on where they sell their commodities.