BALI, Indonesia — The Canadian Federation of Agriculture was a founding member of the Cairns Group farm leaders organization in 1998, but the relationship between the two has always been uneasy.
With Australia as its leading player, the Cairns farm group has been focused almost exclusively and aggressively on the fight to end trade barriers and tariffs that impede agricultural trade.
The CFA supports high tariffs, at least when it comes to its supply management members. It promotes a “balanced” position of supporting exporters while defending the right of Canada’s sensitive dairy and poultry industries to protect themselves from cheaper imports.
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This position usually makes the CFA the odd organization out when Cairns farmers issue another call to eliminate tariffs.
So it was in Bali last week when the group met during a World Trade Organization ministerial meeting to issue a statement calling for firm anti-protection action.
Its final communiqué called for international trade agreements to move toward “open and undistorted flow of food and agricultural commodities in accordance with supply and demand requirements.”
As usual, there was an asterisk indicating CFA does not support that position.
“The CFA believes this wording suggests that countries may not take steps to increase production to meet their local demand and also runs counter to the Canadian government’s balanced trade position,” it said in a statement.
“The CFA also believes this sentence goes beyond the trade principles and objective of the Cairns Group farm leaders.”
The Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, which was invited to join as Canada’s second member because of its unequivocal opposition to protectionism, supported the communiqué in its entirety.
CFA president Ron Bonnett said he agreed with most of the Cairns call for reducing trade barriers and trade distorting subsidies, but the call for “open and undistorted flow of food and agriculture commodities” went too far.
He said his focus has been shifting from Cairns to the new World Farmers’ Organization, which was formed to replace the International Federation of Agricultural Producers.
He has been active on the executive of WFO and said it is much more active and has a much broader focus than the Cairns farmer group.
“It is more inclusive in its agricultural policy views with 50 countries as members.”
He said the Cairns group has been largely inactive for more than two years since it last met in Saskatoon.
Just six of its almost 20 country members were represented at the Bali meeting.
