Delegates to the Agricore United annual meeting in Regina last week said their grain company should take a lead role in world trade
negotiations.
“Trade liberalization is the essence of the survival and competitiveness of our farms,” said Alberta delegate Albert Wagner.
He said AU should take the lead by actively participating in trade talks and by joining organizations that, like AU, want market-distorting tariffs and subsidies reduced.
Eighty percent of delegates agreed with him, passing a resolution he put forward.
They also called on AU to urge the federal government to do whatever is necessary to stop American protectionist measures that hurt Canadian farmers.
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International trade stakeholders said securing markets in the face of increasing protectionism should be the key priority for Canada’s agriculture ministers.
Wayne Drul, who was re-elected chair during the two-day meeting, said AU is a member of the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, an organization dedicated to liberalized trade.
CAFTA participated in the last two ministerial rounds of World Trade Organization meetings.
AU also takes every opportunity to meet with international trade minister Jim Peterson, Drul said.
In his speech to shareholders, he said 90 percent of Canadian farmers rely on the international market but protectionist practices and subsidies cost them $54 per tonne each year.
He is encouraged that U.S. president George Bush is talking about cutting payments to farmers in the 2006 farm bill.
But at the same time, the news that Europe had resumed using export subsidies was troublesome.
“I’m afraid that at the end of the day, when Europe goes ahead, then the U.S. will retaliate and that will affect Canada,” he told reporters.
Chief executive officer Brian Hayward said he’s been in the agricultural business for 25 years and the darkest periods were those in the 1980s when there was a “real down and dirty trade war” and again in the early 1990s.
“It’s not helpful at all that Europe has started using export subsidies in the last month,” he told reporters.
“I simply hope it’s a pressure tactic on their part to help make sure that everybody’s focused on making sure there’s a successful completion to WTO, but it would not be helpful at all if we degenerated.”
Hayward noted there is an agreement in principle and there has to be political will to create a final, binding agreement.
