OTTAWA (Staff) – Canada’s food industry faces a stark choice of success or stagnation, says agriculture minister Ralph Goodale.
Unless the industry changes the way it operates, improves marketing and does more research and development, it will be left behind in the scramble for world markets, he told the Canadian Club of Regina.
“Our growth rate in agri-food exports is lagging behind the rest of the world,” the minister said, according to a text distributed by his office.
While sales to the U.S. have increased, it is an unreliable market.
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“But in other countries like those in Asia and Latin America, which have the most rapid growth in population and incomes and the greatest market potential for the future, we have enjoyed no growth at all in our exports of value-added products,” said Goodale.
While buyers like the quality of Canadian products, they “complain about our prices and they wonder about our real determination to crack into and seriously sell in markets overseas.”
Ironically, the very year Canada’s agriculture ministers set a goal of increasing the value of food exports by 50 percent within seven years, the country recorded a billion-dollar decline in its food trade surplus.
“We have higher processing and marketing costs and less private-sector research than many of our major competitors.”
The answer, Goodale said, is to adapt the country to the new realities – the need for efficient government, cost-effective production and more aggressive marketing and research by the private sector.
It will have to happen with fewer government support dollars because of the need to reduce deficits. “The funds available in future governments will be less, not more.”
Goodale made the comments as he outlined his vision for a reformed agriculture policy and industry.
It would be a world in which production decisions are more sensitive to market demand, where there’s more research and development, where farm revenues provide a “reasonable rate of return” even if they must be supplemented by off-farm income and where environmental farming practices become a marketing bonus.
There also would be a vibrant rural society and a plentiful supply of safe and varied food.
Goodale promised that in the next year and a half, the government will be introducing policies and reforms to help make some of that happen.
