In recognition of the fallout from trade disputes between the United States and key markets for farm products such as China, Mexico and Canada, the US Government is providing a 12-billion-dollar trade mitigation package, which includes a series of pork specific initiatives.

Gary Stordy, the Director of Government and Corporate Affairs with the Canadian Pork Council, says Canadian farmers face the same market conditions and need help from Canada's federal and provincial governments:

“On the US side they have a much stronger ability to insulate themselves because of their hedging ability so they know what their price point is. That's one business risk management tool they have.

“However, it doesn't appear that that was sufficient and the US administration recently announced several initiatives to remediate the pain or the hurt for producers on the ground. These programmes are not targeted to just one industry. It's the number of agricultural commodities that have been hit by tariffs.

“Of the three programmes, one involves a marketing or promotion effort to move pork outside the US. One is their domestic buying programme where they purchase product for, whether it's schools, military or food aid, and then the third one is a direct subsidy.

“On the Canadian side we don't have those tools and we're not confident that the existing tools that producers have access to are sufficient.”

Stordy says timing is import as it's not know how long these trade disruptions will continue.

As reported by Bruce Cochrane, Farmscape.Ca