Farmscape for February 6, 2017

The General Manager of Manitoba Pork says the deteriorating trade relationship between the United States and Mexico is of great concern to pork producers in both Canada and the United States.
U.S. President Donald Trump has withdrawn the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and is planning to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.
In his "State of the Industry" address last week, Manitoba Pork General Manager Andrew Dickson told those on hand for the 2017 Manitoba Swine Seminar these changes on the trade front are concerning.

Clip-Andrew Dickson-Manitoba Pork:
It's very disappointing to see that the American President has decided to withdraw from the TPP.
This was very good for the North American pork business.
We're very concerned about the deteriorating relations between the United States and Mexico because Mexico is a major market for both Canada and the United States for pork products.
I was in Des Moines last week and large discussion there about the implications of these trade agreements.
It just illustrates they recognize fully that Canada is the number four market for U.S. pork and Mexico is the number two market for U.S. pork.
The number one market is Japan and they've walked away from the TPP agreement which was going to enhance the development of that market.
In the last week we're hearing discussion about completely renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA.
This has been exceptionally good for agriculture and particular for pork.
In fact, if they wanted to change NAFTA, we would say look what you were able to do with agriculture, go do that with other sectors but, for goodness sakes leave us alone.
It's actually worked quite well.
We're not looking for NAFTA being changed.

Dickson says these are potentially dark clouds on the horizon.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork