Farm-Scape is sponsored by Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork Play Audio Farm-Scape is a Wonderworks Canada production and is distributed courtesy of Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork.

Farm-Scape, Episode 1345

The Canadian Pork Council is expressing hope that the draft agriculture text discussed by World Trade Organization member nations in Cancún will eventually move forward.

The Cancún Ministerial Conference ended Sunday when conference Chair Luis Ernesto Derbez concluded there wasn't enough agreement to move forward and called off negotiations.

Canadian Pork Council Executive Director Martin Rice says the draft text contains some very important potential developments for the Canadian pork industry.

"The text that was being considered at the Cancún meetings had some interesting aspects for the pork industry.

For the first time it explicitly talked about lowering within quota tariffs and that's a major impediment for us to use tariff rate quotas in the European Union, for example.

It also looked at opportunities to adjust those TRQ's to look at reforming how they are determined.

In the EU's case they calculated things in a way that caused their tariff rate quota to be quite small relative to consumption compared to the original intent so they're looking at serious opportunities to have that redressed.

Another interesting area is what they call tariff escalation where they would reduce the tariffs, which are generally higher, on processed products verses primary products and we are looking at opportunities everywhere to increase our processed pork exports.

Those are the ones that generally have a higher value added and more opportunity for product differentiation and so on so that's another interesting aspect".

Rice says the breakdown of talks is disappointing but the impression he gets from most countries is that the process does need to continue.

He believes the discussions will be a little more complex, will take more time and won't be done in as spectacular a manner as had been envisioned.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.