Farmscape for April 7, 2017

The Pioneer Chair in Agribusiness with Iowa State University says China offers incredible opportunities for North America to expand pork exports, if China maintains its current policies.
"Pork Trade in the World of Trump" was the title of the keynote address earlier this week when Manitoba Pork hosted its 2017 Annual General Meeting in Winnipeg.
Dr. Dermot Hayes, a Professor and Pioneer Chair in Agribusiness with Iowa State University, told those on hand changes in U.S. trade policy have shaken the world's confidence in the United States as a reliable supplier of food.

Clip-Dr. Dermot Hayes-Iowa State University:
The U.S. has suddenly become much more concerned about a trade deficit and ways to impose adjustments to corporate taxes that would stimulate U.S. exports and reduce U.S. imports.
That may or may not be a good thing but it's causing a lot of concern.
Our friends in particular in Mexico, they're viewing it as the start of a trade war and our customers in Asia who are very concerned about the security of their food supply and the possibility that a trade war might disrupt it.
When you tell people, you build a wall or we're going to impose a 20 percent duty and those people, who are naturally proud people, have decided they're not going to build that wall and they're not going to pay for it, they are getting ready for a trade war.
Food is so sacred and so important to people.
You can cause immense damage if you threaten the security of that and it moves people off the concept of importing cheap food from North America towards producing it themselves.
My observation is that protectionists all over the world are winning now because, instead of relying on food from North America, they'd rather produce it themselves so they don't have to be exposed to arbitrary changes in U.S. export rules or import rules or potential trade wars or even embargos.

Dr. Hayes observes in China, where pork is the meat of choice, there's 1.4 billion people, they're getting rich at an incredible rate and the economic are there to support expansion in both the U..S. and in Canada but we've got to allow that to happen and not stimulate protectionism among Chinese policy makers.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork