Farmscape for February 2, 2018

The Saskatchewan Pork Development Board says participation in the Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership ensures Canada's pork sector remains competitive with those in other member countries and provides an advantage over those in non-member nations.
Negotiations aimed at creating an 11 nation Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership concluded successfully last month and the agreement is scheduled to be formally signed in early March.
Mark Ferguson, the Manager of Industry and Policy Analysis with Sask Pork, notes Canada exports close to 70 percent of its pork production to over 100 countries so this deal is especially timely.

Clip-Mark Ferguson-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board:
It's important for a couple of reasons.
Japan is part of the agreement and they are basically our highest value trading partner.
The pork we sell them is priced higher than anywhere else.
Exports to Japan alone totaled over a billion dollars last year so we can't afford for Canada to be left out of any important trade deal involving one of our most important trading partners.
The TPP secures our ability to export pork to Japan on completive terms with other countries that are part of the TPP and other regions which have already secured free trade deals with Japan and the European Union is one of those countries.
It provides our exporters with important competitive advantages relative to countries that aren't part of the TPP and those countries right now are the U.S. since they dropped out of the agreement and Brazil who's also a very cost competitive exporter.
It puts us with equal footing with the countries that have agreements and it gives us an advantage verses countries that don't have agreements and that's a great thing for Canada.

Ferguson says, while Japan is Canada's most lucrative market as part of this deal, there's room to improve our market share in some of the other participating countries including Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia and, given the current uncertainty around the North American Free Trade Agreement, this is particularly significant.
For Farmscape.Ca I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork