Canada should be priority
Two weeks ago, American state governors and senators came to Canada to say United States and Canadian agricultural programs and policies must become “interoperable.”
Said Montana senator Conrad Burns: “We are diverse, but we are one.”
Some Canadian farmers agree. They think that if we were just more like the Americans, they’d like us more.
But right now, our American pals are a bit testy with us.
Last week they slapped a duty on Canadian live cattle imports after a preliminary ruling that Canada has dumped cattle on the U.S. market.
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If there is one agricultural industry in Canada that is in harmony with the one south of the border, it is cattle.
With a little variation for transportation and currency adjustment, the price in Canada is the American price.
So when the fed cattle price in the U.S. fell below the cost of production, it also fell to a money-losing proposition in Canada.
This gave Montana ranchers groups called R-CALF, smarting over the low prices its members were getting, the opening to ask the U.S. government to penalize Canadian imports.
Of course, Canadians were simply accepting the best price offered for their product, but that doesn’t matter.
Everyone on both sides of the border was suffering equally, but R-CALF, a group that does not have the support of the major U.S. cattle group, had the political clout to get American trade protectionism rolling.
The Canadian cattle industry is optimistic it will be able to show the U.S. International Trade Commission this fall that the imports did not injure the American industry and therefore the antidumping duty should be dropped.
But that doesn’t excuse the disruption to Canadian producers this summer nor the cost of fighting the case.
The lesson here might be that Burns is right – agricultural policies and programs on both sides of the border should become “as one.”
But so long as Canada is a separate country, and let’s hope it remains so forever, some American farmers are going to blame us whenever the market goes sour for them.
And because farmers and ranchers have a big say in who gets elected senator in plains states, their complaints, legitimate or not, will get powerful political backing in Washington.
So when Canadians create agricultural policy, they should do it to meet our own goals, not to please the United States.
The Americans will do what they want regardless.
