Canada’s Agriculture sector hoping to see positive movement in this week’s NAFTA renegotiation

Jan 22, 2018

Negotiators from Canada, the U-S and Mexico are meeting in Montreal this week to continue discussions around potential changes for the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Brian Innes is President of the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance.

"We think about Canadian Agri-Food and how our exports have grown by five times since NAFTA have come into effect," he said. "So five times the amount of exports now, then we did just 23 years ago before NAFTA came into effect."

Agricultural Trade between the three countries is over $85 billion combined, with the ag sector in North America saying NAFTA is a good thing.

Innes says agricultural trade is key for Canada but also for Saskatchewan.

"Canada is vastly dependent on agriculture and trade," he said. "So whether it's our canola were we export 90 percent of what we grow, we export more than 90 percent of the pulses that we grow, a vast majority of the cereals weather its barley or wheat, and livestock too beef and pork especially. So when we think about the trade, the US is our number trading partner."

Source : Discoverestevan

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.