DFO: Increased access is "meaningless" to U.S., only hurts Canadian dairy farmers

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At one hundred thousand feet the new USMCA (NAFTA 2.0) comes with little change, according to most main stream analysts. For agriculture we know that this is not true. One of the agricultural sectors hit hardest is the Canadian dairy industry through concessions to the United States in this new deal.

The concessions are two fold:

  1. increased market access of 3.6% ,which is slightly above the negotiated Trans Pacific Partnership level of 3.25%.
  2. Canada has agreed to aggressively phase out its Class 7 pricing system that was implemented in April of 2017.

All day the Dairy Farmers of Canada twitter account was making direct and indirect criticisms of the Trudeau concessions and lack of support for dairy farmers.

Monday afternoon (October 1, 2018) Shaun Haney was able to catch up with Graham Lloyd, general manager of the Dairy Farmers of Ontario, to discuss how the dairy concessions impact Canadian dairy farmers. The topics covered are: Lloyd’s first reaction, were dairy farmers caught off guard by the elimination of class 7 pricing, does this tap future dairy growth, and is this the beginning of the end for supply management?

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