Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe and a delegation headed to China Sept. 15 for a week long trade trip.
This is Moe’s first trade mission to an Asian market. About 20 representatives from the Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership membership, including agriculture, are part of the delegation.
“China has quickly become our second largest market for Saskatchewan exports,” he told reporters. “Those exports include such things as potash fertilizer, includes sustainable energy sources such as uranium, and of course our agri-food products that we export each and every day.”
Read Also
Rented farmland jumps 3.4 million acres in Saskatchewan and Alberta
Farmland rented or leased in the two provinces went from 25.7 million acres in 2011 to 29.1 million in 2021, says Census of Agriculture data.
Last year, the province sent $3.5 billion worth of goods to China; agri-food sales were $2.8 billion.
Moe said the trip is necessary to help preserve the market and make sure industries aren’t reliant on single markets, as is the case with many products entering the United States.
The mission isn’t directly related to the lack of a concluded deal on the North American Free Trade Agreement, but he called that situation concerning.
Moe met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the federal Liberal government’s caucus meetings in Saskatoon last week.
“I agree with the prime minister and (foreign affairs) minister (Chrystia) Freeland with respect to that a bad deal is not good for Canada and by no means should we sign a bad deal,” he said.
He asked Freeland and Trudeau to continue to work for a “positive, synergistic” deal similar to what has been in place for the last 25 years and said he and other premiers are happy to help when called on.
“I have not given a tremendous amount of thought to what no deal would look like,” he added. “I would be concerned that no deal might be somewhat challenging for our province, given that 55 percent of our exports do head to the United States.”
In China, the premier planned to deliver the keynote at the 2018 Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage Forum in Beijing, address several other business meetings, and speak about the link between potash and better crop yields for Chinese farmers at a harvest field day.
