Reading Time: 2 minutes Gandhinagar, India | Reuters –– Canada is keen to boost its business ties with India and is moving forward with attempts to seal a trade pact, Canada’s minister of infrastructure and communities told Reuters. “There is an emphasis on signing a trade agreement with India,” Amarjeet Sohi said in an interview Tuesday. “The process was […] Read more
Canada keen to boost ties, seal trade pact with India
Marijuana firms look to get creative with brand building
Reading Time: 2 minutes Ottawa | Reuters — Canadian marijuana companies, facing potential limits on advertising for recreational pot, are selling health food products and cultivating a lifestyle image to win customers in an anticipated multibillion dollar market. Canada is set to become the first G7 country to legalize recreational marijuana nationally when it introduces legislation next spring. Medical […] Read more
Brexit – good or bad for us?
While the ag sector looks for stability in currency markets, short-term price spikes and long-term trade agreements may get overlooked
Reading Time: 3 minutes Financial markets began to stabilize within days of the U.K.’s surprise Brexit vote this past June, but that doesn’t mean the vote has been shrugged off either by the big exchanges or by the markets that set the prices for farm commodities. It does mean, however, that the world is coming to terms with the […] Read more
German activists take EU-Canada trade deal to Constitutional Court
Reading Time: 2 minutes Berlin | Reuters — Activists delivered what they said was Germany’s biggest-ever public complaint to the Constitutional Court on Wednesday, hoping it will scupper a trade agreement between the European Union and Canada. The deal, which some see as a template for an EU-U.S. agreement still being negotiated, is the EU’s most ambitious trade pact […] Read more
U.S. grains: Soybeans weighed down by big harvest prospects
Reading Time: 2 minutes Reuters — U.S. soybeans and grains dipped on Wednesday, weighed down by abundant harvest prospects in key countries. Soybeans led the way lower, as the closely watched four-day Pro Farmer U.S. Midwest Crop Tour scouted impressive crops in central Illinois, following its observation a day earlier of above-average soybean pod counts in Nebraska and Indiana. […] Read more
Canada presses China on science in canola trade spat
Reading Time: < 1 minute Ottawa | Reuters — Canada is urging the Chinese government to stick to scientific facts in decisions on trade as Beijing plans to toughen its standard on Canadian canola shipments, federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay said Thursday. China’s quarantine authority, AQSIQ, notified the Canadian Food Inspection Agency last month that it would allow no more […] Read more
Canada, EU finally settle trade deal after opposition
Reading Time: 2 minutes Ottawa/Brussels | Reuters — The European Union has convinced Canada to include a new way of settling investor claims in their trade deal, making it more likely that it will be passed and putting the U.S. under pressure to accept the same terms. The two sides wrapped up negotiations on the Comprehensive Economic and Trade […] Read more
2016 could be a ‘battleground year’ for commodity prices
A ‘battleground year’ is how analyst Errol Anderson sees 2016. Prices will be profitable… sometimes…but success will only come to producers who rein in their emotions
Reading Time: 8 minutes It isn’t only agriculture. China has become the world’s largest market for an incredibly long list of commodities. Consider the manufacturing industry, for example, where the Chinese generate roughly half of global demand — they use 54 per cent of global aluminum production, 50 per cent of nickel, 48 per cent of copper and 46 […] Read more
Election shifts attention to trade deal as race narrows
Reading Time: 2 minutes Ottawa | Reuters –– Trailing in second place with two weeks left before Canada’s election, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced a new trade deal Monday that largely protects the key agricultural voting bloc, putting pressure on opponents who had hoped to have more to attack. Harper touted the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a good deal […] Read more
Canada says TPP offers limited access to dairy market
Reading Time: 2 minutes Ottawa | Reuters — Canada said on Monday that a major trade deal agreed by 12 Pacific nations would only allow limited access to protected Canadian domestic dairy and poultry markets, a politically sensitive issue ahead of the Oct. 19 election. Officials said the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would offer up just 3.25 per cent of […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
