Sean Gorrill is a 37-year-old Saskatchewan dairy farmer who can’t imagine that a World Trade Organization deal will help him or his farmer neighbours, even though many of them believe otherwise.
He says a deal that cuts dairy over-quota tariffs would force him to expand his 1,500-acre, 190-milker operation or leave farming.
“I follow trade talks and I just don’t see anything good coming out of it for my industry, just controlling the damage,” he said in a November interview.
“We have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Why are we involved?”
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Gorrill said he understands that some of his neighbours in other farm sectors think otherwise, but he doubts that even they will benefit from a subsidy and tariff-cutting deal, once other more powerful players in the industry take their slice of the benefit.
“I know some of my neighbours are in trouble and think they need a deal, but honestly, I can’t even see that they will be winners.”
Next door in Alberta, Camrose-area canola grower Stewart Gilroy can’t understand how anyone could think like that.
As a Canola Council of Canada representative, he is in Hong Kong cheering on the negotiators and hoping for a deal that cuts foreign tariffs, caps American soybean subsidies and gives Canadian canola the same access to the world that soy and other oil competitors enjoy.
“I just don’t see how anyone could doubt that if we have more market access, we will move more crop, there will be less carryover and stocks in storage and prices will go up,” he said. “Once supply diminishes, prices go up and the benefit is distributed through the system. I don’t see how anyone could say that more trade doesn’t create more wealth for farmers.”
Clearly, there is no single Canadian view of the benefits of and proper strategies for WTO talks. It is why Canadian governments for 20 years have tried to walk a fine line between export and domestic industries.
It is why the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, in trying to represent both import-sensitive farmers and export interests such as grain and pork, draws flak from groups such as Grain Growers of Canada and the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance that believe the only proper trade stance is an export, non-defensive stance.
All those conflicting interests will be on the line, and well-represented by strong lobby contingents, as ministers from most of the WTO’s 148 members gather in Hong Kong this week to try to push the four year negotiating round toward a 2006 conclusion.
“These are complicated issues indeed in many countries, including Canada,” said New Zealand conservative MP Tim Groser, who until this summer was chair of WTO agricultural negotiations.
“I understand perfectly the difficulty faced by the supply management in facing these talks.”
But it goes beyond supply management.
Peter Eggers, a 47-year-old grain and livestock producer from Grande Prairie, Alta., is nervous Canada will sign a deal that ends or undermines the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly.
“If they trade away the wheat board, it would be very negative for my farm, costing me money on every tonne and probably ending my ability to use producer cars because the grain companies I would have to market through would not be interested in taking my producer cars that bypassed their terminals,” he said.
Losing the CWB monopoly would probably drive him to change crops and the farm, he added.
“That would be very negative for me, like loss of the Crow was.”
For grain farmer Curtis Sims of McGregor, Man., a WTO deal that ended the wheat board monopoly and curbed foreign subsidies and import barriers would drive him to do nothing other than celebrate.
“I think a deal would lead to prices gradually increasing, nothing dramatic but moving in the right direction and if the monopoly was gone, we would have more choices,” he said. “If there is failure and we see the status quo continue, we are just slowly being ground down into the dust.”
There is less division on the processing, crushing, manufacturing and exporting side of the industry.
Most representatives of the agribusiness sector said tariff reductions and subsidy reforms are inevitable and should be embraced.
“A deal that capped competitor subsidies and increased market access will increase our sales and I believe that would translate into higher prices,” said Cam Dahl, government relations director with Agricore United.
“Even a modest deal would have an impact at the farmgate. A failure, on the other hand, does not bring the status quo. It means that countries like the United States that have not reached their allowable subsidy limits will crank them up and we will be into a trade war.”
Canola Council of Canada vice-president Tyler Bjornson said a WTO collapse would lead to increased Canadian surpluses and continued low prices and bad times for producers, crushers and exporters.
“No deal for us is a bad deal.”
And dairy processors, despite the fears of their dairy farmer suppliers, said that change in dairy tariff protections are inevitable and should be planned for by the industry.
“Listen, the dairy industry already is in an environment very different from what existed several years ago,” Canadian Dairy Processors’ Association president Don Jarvis said.
“Producers are trying their best to maintain or even increase their protection for the domestic market and what we’re saying is change is coming, we have to prepare and we can accommodate it. But we have to quit pretending it can be stopped. It cannot and Hong Kong is part of that.”
