2017 Work on the Canadian Agricultural Partnership

When reflecting on 2017, the Alberta Agriculture and Forestry Minister says, he's proud of all the work put into the Canadian Agricultural Partnership.

The new program will be replacing Growing Forward 2.

The Canadian Agricultural Partnership is a $3 billion, five year investment by Federal, Provincial, and Territorial governments to strengthen the agriculture and agri-food sector.

Carlier says, the new program will be replacing Growing Forward 2 in April of next year.

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Two Options for Ag Without NAFTA

A Former Chief Agricultural Trade Negotiator for Canada was in Winnipeg speaking at the Fields on Wheels Transportation Conference organized by the University of Manitoba and the Transport Institute.

Mike Gifford gave two possible outcomes, if the United States decides to withdraw from NAFTA.

"The first scenario is that NAFTA is terminated between Canada and the United States. What happens then, is other things being equal, we revert back to the original Canada-U.S. trade agreement, which is so far in agricultures concern, is the only commitment, because in NAFTA, we didn't change anything on agriculture visiting the United States."

Gifford says the other possible scenario is that the U.S. terminates NAFTA and the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.

He says, that this would mean reverting back to tariffs established under the World Trade Organization, which for agriculture, were fairly low sitting at about 4 per cent for most commodities.

 

Sustainability in Agriculture

Sustainability in agriculture was a common theme at this year's Manitoba Agronomists Conference at the University of Manitoba.

Michelle Nutting of the Calgary based company, Agrium, kicked off the event last week with her presentation.

Nutting is also a board member of the U.S. based group, Field to Market, which is a multi-stakeholder organization which includes over 130 members.

She says, the organization is working towards things such as decreased gas emissions, and increasing bio diversity.

 

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