The American market is Canadian farmers’ biggest asset and greatest opportunity.
It is also farmers’ largest risk and threat.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to finesse that risk-versus-reward situation. But balancing those opportunities and threats is arguably the biggest risk management issue for Canada’s agriculture sector in coming decades.
With China proving itself not just an unpredictable trading partner, but a dishonest and bullying one as well, Canadian farmers’ reliance upon the United States is likely to grow in coming years, rather than decline, as many of us had hoped.
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To many, including me, that reliance upon the U.S. often appears to be over-reliance, which becomes obvious every time a trade barrier is thrown up, such as with the various times dumping and countervailing duties have been imposed, with the drawn-out border closure to beef due to BSE, and with the price-hammering disruptions to pigs and pork due to U.S. Country-of-Origin Labelling.
Each time, that pushes some farmers out of the business and sets thousands of others back by years.
But the U.S. market is now and is likely to remain Canadian farmers’ best bet and surest opportunity to boost sales, find new opportunities and build new agriculture-based industries.
A good example of that is in the plant protein area, which is an area of explosive growth and one in which Canada is well-positioned to grow due to longstanding and prescient work by Canada’s Consulate General in Minneapolis. It has connected Canadian and U.S. protein producers, processors and others to help build the value chain for what could become an even larger industry, with Canada in the centre of it.
On the other hand, some worry that Canadian producers might once more get tied too closely to the U.S. market, which not only brings risks if there are future trade problems, but also could turn Canadian attention away from the Asia-Pacific and European markets that our new trade deals have given us better access to than the U.S. currently enjoys.
Situations like these require careful balancing by Canada’s agriculture industries, by processors and by the federal government.
It’d be crazy to not try to develop greater and deeper connections within the North American market of which we are a core element.
But it would be negligent for Canada to slip into trade complacency if the new NAFTA gets approved and other markets seem like too much work. We have a new trade deal with the European Union, but not much of the promise for Canadian farmers is yet being realized. That’s a challenge worth tackling.
And the Trans-Pacific Partnership with several Asian nations is a set of opportunities that Canadian export industries need to be tackling now, before the U.S. gets a wiser president who understands the value of trade and gets the country back on a sensible course.
For Canadian farmers, it’s always going to be an anxiety-filled situation, with reliance upon a nearby and lucrative market, but not always a dependable one. It is also an unchangeable reality.
Currently, there’s a chance to further develop our U.S. ties, and also to push ahead in other markets. If we’ve learned anything in the last two years, it’s that market access is unpredictable, and the more markets you have, the better.
