Regulatory details of Canada’s new Agricultural Growth Act will be key say farm groups

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Comments

While Gerry Ritz deserves credit for saying farmers will now benefit from greater access to new crop varieties and the latest technology to remain "competitive", he falls way short of enabling Canadian farmers to remain "competitive" with the U.S. farmer's Farm Bill. The new U.S. Farm Bill ARC program "invests" a guaranteed target price per bushel (or seed) which encourages overproduction production at below the true cost and allows U.S. farmers to supply grain at below cost in order to spin the rest of their value added sectors. This ever evolving Farm Bill "investment" policy allows U.S. to "out compete" Canadian farmers on a whole bunch of "value added" products. Now couple that to the growing list of U.S. "competitive" advantages such as lower machinery prices, lower parts prices, lower electricity and energy prices, etc. and Canada indeed has a "competitive" problem.

The irony of any Canadian agricultural "growth" Act is that when it comes to the dairy sector's:

(A) price gouging at the farm gate
(B) quota price caps
(C) restrictions on quota transfers

dairy is, thanks to a government which claims to support growth, a no-growth sector in Canada.

If anyone needs additional data to support that premise, Google "Lino Saputo and no growth in the dairy sector" to note Saputo's comments on February 15, 2015 and on November 7, 2012 to the effect that because of supply controls, Canada has a no-growth dairy industry, and that's why Saputo is expanding outside of Canada.

If the government of Canada was at all serious about growth in the agriculture sector, and it's obviously not, it would do something to remedy this double-standard instead of defending it.

Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON

Forget about seeds and reel in the Alberta Beef Industry.They are one BSE case away from another border closure! They don't seem to learn out there,its a matter of 1 step forward and 2 steps back.This recent BSE case just gives ammunition to the US COOL supporters and proves the 2007 ban on suspect feed was useless.

I sometimes wonder if all those cases of BSE were in Ontario or Quebec how different it would be but because its Tory Blue Alberta they seem to just roll along with it till the next case.

Of course Mr. Ritz would rather talk about "crop varieties"..geeeez!

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