The guardians collect, trade and plant hundreds of seeds to preserve forgotten varieties of tomatoes, corn and other vegetables that were historically farmed by the Indigenous Mapuche people.

One such guardian, Ana Yanez, said the varieties the guardians aim to save are dwindling due to changing environments or farmers opting for higher-yield varieties.

“We are rescuing the seeds and knowledge of our ancestors,” said Delfin Toro, another guardian. “How they harvested, how they sowed, the dynamics of the moon, when to plant, when to harvest.”

The guardians are finding clients at high-end restaurants.

Pablo Caceres, a seed guardian and chef at Vik Winery’s Pavilion restaurant in the Millahue Valley in central Chile, said he normally finds no more than five varieties of tomatoes at markets and fairs.

“This year we’ll have 26 varieties of tomatoes and we think that there are more than 200,” Caceres said.

This diversification could also help crops adapt to new terrain and areas affected by a changing climate. Ricardo Pertuze, an agronomist at the University of Chile, said new varieties are needed when climate change makes a crop’s current location unsuitable.

The genetic diversity the guardians are collecting are essential to find those varieties, Pertuze said.

Wilson Hugo, an official at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, said the trend of safeguarding traditional seeds exists in other nations such as India, China, sub-Saharan Africa, as well as in countries of the former Soviet Union.

“We have to congratulate them and support them and that’s probably not enough,” Hugo said. “We need more of them, we need to do more of this kind of work.”

The post Chile’s ‘seed guardians’ grow and protect forgotten food varieties appeared first on Country Guide.

Over the last decade, Russia has become a major agriculture exporter and is striving to become a global agricultural superpower. However, it remains reliant on seed imports, primarily from Western countries.

In November, the Russian Agriculture Ministry said it planned to gradually decrease seed imports from Western countries.

The national food security strategy mandates that domestically produced seeds to constitute 75 per cent of total demand, and while figures vary depending on the seed type, they are significantly below this target. The lowest share if domestically produced sugar beet seeds, which stands at 8 per cent.

The watchdog attributed the ban on one company in each of the four countries to the discovery of pests such as sunflower phomopsis, corn leaf spot, and the brown marmorated stink bug in imported seeds.

The targeted companies are the Hungarian unit of the agrichemicals and seeds group Syngenta, which is Chinese-owned and integrated into Sinochem Holdings Corp, France’s Lidea, Turkey’s GLS Tohumculuk and Chile’s Pinto Piga Seeds.

In 2023, Russia introduced import quotas for sunflower and corn seeds, but these quotas were not fully enforced this year as Russian farmers have switched to domestically produced seeds.

— Reporting by Olga Popova and Gleb Bryanski

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According to Prairie Ag Hotwire data from Wednesday, high-delivered bids for yellow peas are now priced at $11.25 per bushel, $4.16 (59 per cent) higher than at the same time last year. Meanwhile, the price of green peas has dropped $1.50/bu., or 13 per cent, to $10.

Like barley and corn from North America, the yellow pea is yet another crop seeing larger shipments go to China as it repairs a hog industry decimated by African swine fever.

According to Canadian Grain Commission data, 1.3 million tonnes of peas were exported to China during the 2020-21 crop year up to the end of January, 33.5 per cent more than at the same time last year. Also, 204,800 tonnes of peas have gone to Bangladesh, 17 per cent more than last year.

“They’re trying to build up their swine,” Dale McManus, a trader for Johnston’s Grain at Welwyn, Sask., said. “They’re buying a lot of peas to feed them.”

“China has a shortfall on tonnage and they’re playing catch-up right now,” Kent Anholt, a trader for Rayglen Commodities in Saskatoon, said, adding that 80 per cent of Canadian yellow pea exports are going to China.

Mike Jubinville of MarketsFarm also mentioned the pea processing industry has grown in Western Canada and the crop is increasingly being used for feed to fill the void left by other depleted crops such as barley.

While he projects at least 3.5 million tonnes of Canadian peas going to China this year, other players have also emerged. Chile imported 68,000 tonnes of Canadian peas in January alone, more than twice as much as China. Ukraine and Russia have both upped their own pea exports to China in response to wheat tariffs, but Jubinville doesn’t believe they will affect the amount of Canadian exports until the next marketing year.

“It’s going to take another growing cycle just to get to a point where we start seeing overproduction issues and I don’t see that happening immediately,” he added. “There’s plenty of room in the Chinese market to incorporate more peas from other sources.”

Despite stronger pea prices, Jubinville expects similar seeding numbers (4.25 million acres) for peas in Canada compared to last year, as it competes for acreage against other high-priced crops.

“Historically, (the new pea crop price of) $9/bu. is a profitable price, but is it enough of an incentive to really encourage a lot of new acres to come in relative to the canola, the barley, the oats and the wheat? No, it’s not.”

— Adam Peleshaty reports for MarketsFarm from Stonewall, Man.

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In recent years, U.S. producers have claimed damages from what they argue are unfair trade practices by Mexico’s large farm exporters, particularly fresh fruit growers who compete against U.S. producers from politically influential states such as Florida.

The ITC “has determined that fresh, chilled or frozen blueberries are not being imported into the United States in such increased quantities as to be a substantial cause of serious injury, or threat of serious injury, to the domestic industry,” the independent body said in its ruling.

The Mexican government praised the ruling in a statement, adding that its blueberry exports complement U.S. production and provide a benefit to consumers with year-round supply.

The ruling in the so-called Section 201 safeguard investigation ends for now the possibility of the U.S. government imposing duties on imported blueberries.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) had requested that the ITC initiate the case to determine whether the foreign supplies were hurting domestic growers.

The same law was used in 2018 by the Trump administration to impose tariffs and quotas on imports of washing machines and solar panels.

The USTR, in its report last fall announcing it would seek a Section 201 investigation, cited U.S. Census Bureau data showing imports of blueberries into the U.S. had “more than doubled” between 2014 and 2019.

Those data showed the U.S. importing over US$1.24 billion in blueberries in 2019, with over 98 per cent coming from five countries: Peru ($485.2 million), Chile ($313 million), Mexico ($291.1 million), Canada ($116 million) and Argentina ($33.3 million).

In 2020, Mexico exported some 53,000 tonnes of fresh, frozen and processed blueberries valued at more than $355 million, according to agriculture ministry data.

Around 96 per cent of the shipments were sent to the United States.

— Reporting for Reuters by David Lawder in Washington and David Alire Garcia in Mexico City. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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Inspectors raided the offices of Frutti di Bosco, a little-known fruit trading company on the second floor of a tower block in downtown Santiago.

The files, company data and sales records they seized revealed a food trading racket that spanned three continents.

At its heart was a fraud centered on raspberries. Low-cost frozen berries grown in China were shipped to a packing plant in central Chile. Hundreds of tons of fruit were repackaged and rebranded by Frutti di Bosco as premium Chilean-grown organics, then shipped to consumers in Canadian cities including Vancouver and Montreal, according to documents prepared by Chilean Customs as part of its investigation. The agency calculated that at least $12 million worth of mislabeled raspberries were sent to Canada between 2014 and 2016.

Much of that product, the documents showed, came from Harbin Gaotai Food Co Ltd, a Chinese supplier. Canadian health authorities later linked berries from Harbin Gaotai to a 2017 norovirus outbreak in Quebec that sickened hundreds of people. Canadian authorities issued a recall on Harbin Gaotai berries coming directly to Canada from China dating back to July 2016.

What they didn’t realize is that Harbin Gaotai raspberries had also entered Canada through a backdoor during that period in the form of falsely labeled fruit shipped from Chile by Frutti di Bosco.

The scheme, pieced together for the first time by Reuters, lays bare the ease with which mislabeled, potentially risky products can be slipped past the world’s health and customs agencies, even as authorities across the globe scramble to ensure foods entering their countries are free of a new scourge – COVID-19.

Harbin Gaotai did not reply to requests to comment for this report.

Frutti di Bosco’s owner, Cesar Ramirez, who was convicted last year in Chile for falsifying export documents to facilitate the scheme, declined to speak with Reuters. His attorney declined to comment.

Reuters examined thousands of pages of legal filings, investigation documents and trade records obtained through freedom-of-information requests in Chile and Canada. Reuters also spoke to more than two dozen people with knowledge of the case, including the manager of a fruit-packing house that uncovered the deception.

Pulling off the fraud was relatively simple, the investigation revealed.

The Canada-Chile trade pact, which came into force in 1997, allows exporters to self-certify the provenance of their goods, trade experts said. The agreement allowed the mislabeled berries to enter Canada tariff-free, evading a 6% levy slapped on the same fruit imported directly from China, Chilean Customs documents show.

More lucrative still, conventional fruit represented as “organic” could fetch premium prices, piggybacking on Chile’s reputation for safety and quality. Documents certifying the fruit as organic were faked, customs inspectors found.

(For an interactive graphic on how the scam worked, click here.)

Chile kept it quiet

Chile’s export fruit industry, alerted by Customs to the whistleblower complaint in late 2016, immediately grasped the potential fallout for the $7 billion sector, according to correspondence obtained by Reuters under Chile’s Transparency Act.

The southern hemisphere nation stocks grocers in the United States, Canada and Europe with grapes, cherries, blueberries and raspberries in the northern winter. If word got out that Chile’s fruit was not what it purported to be – or worse still, if someone got sick – it could tarnish its hard-won image.

“This situation could generate serious problems for the food industry in our country,” Ronald Bown, head of the Chilean Fruit Exporters Association, wrote in a Nov. 15, 2016 letter to Customs obtained by Reuters. He asked the agency to investigate the whistleblower’s allegations and warned of “the closing of markets” to Chilean fruit.

Bown confirmed writing the letter and repeated the same concerns when approached by Reuters on July 30.

Chile did not notify Canada that anything was amiss, however, according to Canadian officials. An alert failed to materialize even after Ramirez, Frutti di Bosco’s owner, alleged he had colluded with the buyer of the fruit – Montreal-based Alasko Foods Inc – to ship the illicit products to Canada, according to Chilean investigation records.

Canada’s food inspection agency said it is now investigating the matter after Reuters contacted authorities there for this story.

Alasko denied wrongdoing. The company is insolvent and entered into receivership last month, according to documents filed Sept. 10 in Quebec Superior Court by financial consultancy Raymond Chabot, Inc, the court-appointed receiver. Raymond Chabot declined to comment.

Alasko officials did not respond to requests for comment regarding the receivership.

The company’s promotional materials claim it is one of Canada’s leading purveyors of frozen fruit, with products sold in Costco and Sam’s Club. Costco declined to comment. Sam’s Club did not respond to a request for comment.

Ramirez told Chilean Customs investigators that Alasko ordered the repackaging of the Chinese berries “because it was more economical to do it in Chile,” to take advantage of the Chile-Canada free-trade deal, Customs records show. He made the same allegations in a civil lawsuit he filed in Chile´s capital Santiago in June 2019, claiming Alasko had “directly financed and supervised” the operation. Canada received 84% of Frutti di Bosco’s produce shipments, the Customs investigation found.

Ramirez last year pleaded guilty to two criminal counts of making false statements on export declarations. He received a $6,266 fine and a suspended 122-day jail sentence. Chilean Customs had recommended a maximum fine of $55.6 million.

His lawsuit seeks $26 million in damages from Alasko and Chilean businessman Mauricio Rebolledo. Ramirez claims in the suit he was duped into participating as a front man in the scam by Rebolledo, whom he alleges operated on behalf of Alasko.

Ramirez told Chilean Customs his firm paid sales commissions to a business tied to Rebolledo, according to investigators’ notes on the raid of Frutti di Bosco’s offices seen by Reuters. Customs did not mention Rebolledo in its final report about the investigation.

Prosecutors did not charge Rebolledo in the case.

In a written response to Reuters, Rebolledo said he was an independent fruit broker who had done business with both Frutti di Bosco and Alasko. He said he was not Alasko’s representative in Chile.

Rebolledo denied wrongdoing and said Ramirez’s allegations about his involvement in the illegal scheme were “false and tendentious.” Rebolledo said the civil suit was “unjustified” and an attempt by Ramirez to “confuse and hold others responsible” for his own misdeeds.

Alasko and Rebolledo have contested the suit, arguing it should be thrown out on grounds of inadequate evidence. The case is pending.

Frutti di Bosco continued shipping fruit, including raspberries labeled as Chilean, to Alasko through at least 2018, according to internal company shipping documents and export declarations viewed by Reuters.

Alasko said in a March 6 statement that it has always complied with all regulations on fruit imports and exports. It said it no longer does business with Frutti di Bosco and declined to comment specifically on that firm’s illicit activity.

“It is the responsibility of the growers and packers to have the proper food safety and organic certifications, and to provide the associated documentation” required for shipments to Canada, Alasko said in the email.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), however, said importers also play a key role in keeping consumers safe. The “onus is on importers of food into Canada to ensure that they source safe food from reliable suppliers and that the food meets all Canadian regulatory requirements,” the CFIA told Reuters in an email.

A Canadian government spokeswoman said her country’s Foreign Ministry, the CFIA and the Canada Border Services Agency had no records of the case or communication about it from the Chilean government.

Chilean trade expert Hugo Baierlein said the reported lack of communication was highly irregular. He said it would have been standard practice for Chilean officials to reach out in such circumstances. Baierlein served as director of foreign trade for SOFOFA, the Federation of Chilean Industry, an umbrella group that represents Chilean industry.

Chilean Customs would not say whether it had contacted Canada, and that any such communications would be confidential.

The economic relations arm of Chile´s Foreign Ministry declined to answer questions about whether Chile had informed Canada. The agency defended Chile’s handling of the case. “The administrative and judicial procedures operated fully,” a spokeswoman said.

Neither Chile´s Foreign or Customs ministries would comment on any new steps they have taken to deter cheating and ensure the integrity of the country’s produce exports.

‘So obvious’

Chilean Customs officials were alerted to something fishy in late 2016, when they received a letter from Fruticola Olmue, one of the country’s top fruit-packing plants, located in Chillan, 250 miles south of the capital.

Juan Sutil, the owner of a major Chilean food conglomerate and now head of Chile’s influential Chamber of Commerce and Production, had purchased Fruticola Olmue the previous year. An internal audit raised red flags about work the plant had done for Frutti di Bosco, according to a letter dated Oct. 24, 2016, seen by Reuters, which was signed by Fruticola Olmue General Manager Juan Miguel Ovalle.

Ovalle’s team found that the Fruticola Olmue plant had repackaged imported fruit into plastic bags labeled as Chilean organics, a practice that started under the facility’s previous owners in 2014 and was still happening when new management discovered it, according to documents in the Chilean Customs investigation.

Max Hassler, the former CEO of Fruticola Olmue and a current member of its board of directors, did not reply to a request for comment. He was not charged by prosecutors.

In the first seven months of 2016 alone, Fruticola Olmue appeared to have packed at least 400 tonnes of mislabeled fruit bound for Canada, enough to fill 25 shipping containers, its letter to Customs said.

“It was so obvious,” Ovalle, who no longer works for Fruticola Olmue, told Reuters. “All of (Frutti di Bosco’s) raw material was imported.”

Fruticola Olmue cut ties with Frutti di Bosco on Oct. 24, 2016, the same day it alerted Customs, according to a separate letter it sent to Frutti di Bosco and seen by Reuters. Fruticola Olmue told Reuters it no longer does business with Ramirez, Canadian frozen fruit firm Alasko, or Rebolledo, the fruit broker.

Searching Frutti di Bosco’s books, Customs inspectors found that between 2014 and 2016 the company had exported more than 3,600 tonnes of fruit and vegetables. The provenance of half that produce wasn’t clear, agency records show. Canada was by far the top export destination, but Frutti di Bosco also shipped to the United States, Kuwait, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. In their final report to agency leaders, Customs inspectors recommended the investigation be expanded to determine the sources of all the company’s produce.

The investigation dossier provides no evidence of an expanded probe. Customs told Reuters it pursued all avenues and that no open questions remained.

The agency’s final report said Alasko was a major supplier of foreign-sourced fruit that Frutti di Bosco imported into Chile, as well as the top purchaser of Frutti di Bosco’s exports. Chilean Customs did not recommend criminal charges against Alasko.

It did, however, state in its final report that the “scope of this investigation goes beyond our national territory,” and that it appeared “Chinese and Canadian companies” had used Chile as a middleman to dodge tariffs.

Guillermo Gonzalez, head of ChileAlimentos, a trade group that represents Chile´s food industry, condemned the raspberry fraud, but called it an “isolated” incident.

Others aren’t so sure. Complex global supply chains mean law enforcement can’t keep up with players looking to game the system, according to Gary Ades, a U.S.-based food safety consultant.

A dragnet led by Europol and Interpol across 78 countries, including the United States and much of Europe, turned up 16,000 tonnes and 33 million liters of suspect food and drink in just five months in late 2018 and 2019. Consultants estimate food fraud costs the global industry billions of dollars annually.

Ades said the faux Chilean fruit caper would have been easy to pull off. “You just get it into a packing house, and you can’t tell where things are going,” he said. “It’s very, very difficult to trace.”

Illness in Canada

As Chile investigated Frutti di Bosco in early 2017, Canada saw an outbreak of norovirus, a highly contagious stomach flu often triggered by food tainted with human feces. It ripped through convalescent homes and children’s daycare centers in Quebec between March and August of 2017, according to a report from Quebec’s Health Ministry and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. More than 700 people fell ill, the ministry said.

The culprit: Frozen raspberries imported from China, according to an investigation by Canada’s CFIA, the food inspection agency. The supplier: Harbin Gaotai, one of the major sources of raspberries repackaged in the Chilean export scam. Reuters obtained a copy of the CFIA report on the probe via Canada’s Access to Information Act.

Harbin Gaotai, based in Binzhou, China, didn’t respond to requests for comment. Its products have raised concerns elsewhere. The company since 2009 has been on a U.S. Food and Drug Administration watchlist after American authorities found raspberry shipments containing illegal pesticide residue.

In Canada, the outbreak prompted a recall of all raspberry products originating from Harbin Gaotai arriving in Canada between July 24, 2016 and July 26, 2017. The Canadian investigation identified Canada’s Alasko Foods as one of three importers of the tainted berries.

The Chilean Customs investigation showed that Frutti di Bosco was shipping repackaged Chinese raspberries to Alasko in Canada until the end of 2016, which directly overlapped with the period of the Canadian recall.

Some of those Chinese berries were supplied by Harbin Gaotai and shipped to Chile via a middleman – New Zealand-based Directus South East Asia Ltd – according to international trade and ship cargo data viewed by Reuters.

Directus told Reuters it had shipped raspberries to Chile in 2016 but was “not aware of any fraud.” It said it had no relationship with Alasko or Frutti di Bosco beyond those shipments.

No one knows whether the Harbin Gaotai raspberries imported via Chile contributed to the Canadian norovirus outbreak. Canadian authorities, unaware at the time of the illicit triangulation, said they never knew to look.

($1 = 797.9 Chilean pesos)

– Reporting by Dave Sherwood in Santiago; Additional reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal.

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The sale to Tianqi comes as Chinese companies increasingly scour the globe for the raw materials necessary to ramp up Chinese production of electric vehicles.

Lithium is a key component in the batteries that power everything from cellphones to electric vehicles.

“A minority stake in SQM is great from our perspective, especially when we look at long–term growth and expectations for the lithium industry,” said Ashley Ozols, business development manager for Tianqi, after the deal closed.

Tianqi struck a deal earlier this year to buy the stake from Nutrien, the company formed by the merger of Agrium and PotashCorp. As part of that merger deal, Nutrien was required to sell the stake.

That share came from PotashCorp, which had bought into SQM starting in 2001 with an 18 per cent stake. SQM’s businesses also include specialty fertilizers and iodine.

The Tianqi deal, however, immediately met with scrutiny from regulators, competitors and consumer groups.

Chilean authorities initially expressed concerns that a tie-up between Tianqi and SQM would give the Chinese company a near monopoly over the global lithium market and unprecedented pricing power.

Tianqi, through Talison Lithium which it controls, is also in a joint venture with SQM’s top competitor, No. 1 lithium producer Albemarle Corp. in Australia, that owns the world’s biggest lithium mine, Greenbushes.

A Chilean antitrust court eventually approved the transaction, placing conditions on the sale that limit Tianqi’s access to SQM business secrets and sensitive information.

Ozols said Tianqi would nominate three directors to SQM’s board following the Chilean miner’s shareholder meeting in April.

Several groups, including SQM itself, filed appeals against the antitrust court’s decision to authorize the deal, but each was struck down, allowing it to proceed.

The country’s Constitutional Court in late October also rejected a last-ditch lawsuit by former chairman Julio Ponce Lerou, who controls SQM’s majority shareholder Pampa Group, to overturn the antitrust court’s decision.

“We will reach out to the Pampa Group and others and obviously form a good relationship so we can work together for the benefit of all SQM shareholders,” Tianqi’s Ozols said.

Nutrien has said it plans to use proceeds from selling stakes in SQM and two other companies to expand its network of farm retail stores in the U.S. and establish one in Brazil.

— Reporting for Reuters by Antonio De la Jara; writing by Dave Sherwood.

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Walmart is buying Cornershop, which offers deliveries in Mexico and Chile, for US$225 million. The deal, one of Walmart’s various global investments and tie-ups geared at helping the retailer compete with Amazon.com, is slated to close by year’s end.

In the U.S., Walmart is the largest seller of groceries but grapples with the challenge of swiftly delivering fresh food to the homes of online customers. The company has promised to make such deliveries in 100 U.S. cities by the end of 2018 and so far covers nearly 50 markets.

In a race to meet its goal, the company is working with several small delivery companies including Doordash and Postmates after ditching partnerships with ride-share companies Uber and Lyft.

Cornershop chief technology officer Daniel Undurraga said in an interview on Tuesday that Cornershop plans to launch in Toronto in the first quarter next year. If it does well, Vancouver and Montreal would follow.

If Canada is successful overall, Undurraga said, the U.S. could be the next target.

“Canada is a good test market for launching a service in the U.S. It is very similar, but smaller,” he said.

Walmart did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Judith McKenna, chief executive of Walmart International, said in September that Cornershop was expected to provide a learning experience for Walmart’s markets beyond Mexico and Chile.

An English-language version of the app will roll out within a month as part of preparation for the Canada launch, Undurraga said.

Cornershop still needs to partner with a local payments company and recruit workers in Canada. About 11,000 people currently work for Cornershop across 11 cities in Mexico and Chile.

Apart from Walmart the platform also offers deliveries from various retailers, including Costco Wholesale Corp. and Mexican chains Chedraui and La Comer. Undurraga said Cornershop is building firewalls so that Walmart cannot access customer data from other stores.

The company will also consider raising delivery fees to account for higher labour costs in Canada and the U.S. Cornershop generates other revenue through advertising, commissions from retailers and price mark-ups.

The technology, however, is already in place.

“We have our own tools for being able to do this without a lot of effort,” Undurraga said.

— Daina Beth Solomon reports on retail and e-commerce for Reuters from Mexico City; additional reporting by Nandita Bose in New York.

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The deal came as U.S. President Donald Trump vowed earlier in the day to press ahead with a plan to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, a move that other nations and the International Monetary Fund said could start a global trade war.

The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) will reduce tariffs in countries that together amount to more than 13 per cent of the global economy — a total of US$10 trillion in gross domestic product. With the U.S., it would have represented 40 per cent.

“Today, we can proudly conclude this process, sending a strong message to the international community that open markets, economic integration and international cooperation are the best tools for creating economic opportunities and prosperity,” said Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.

Heraldo Munoz, Chile’s minister of foreign affairs, said he expected Chile’s trade with China, its top trading partner, to continue growing alongside trade with CPTPP countries.

Even without the U.S., the deal will span a market of nearly 500 million people, making it one of the world’s largest trade agreements, according to Chilean and Canadian trade statistics.

The original 12-member agreement, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), was thrown into limbo early last year when Trump withdrew from the deal three days after his inauguration. He said the move was aimed at protecting U.S. jobs.

The 11 remaining nations finalized a revised trade pact in January. That agreement will become effective when at least six member nations have completed domestic procedures to ratify it, possibly before the end of the year.

“We are very hopeful like others that we will see the CPTPP coming into effect about the end of the year or shortly thereafter,” said Australia Trade Minister Steven Ciobo.

Canadian commodity and industry groups on Thursday hailed the signing. Chris White, CEO of the Canadian Meat Council, said the council is “confident that this deal has the potential to increase beef and pork sales by at least $1 billion, creating the potential to support an over 11,000 new jobs” in Canada.

For the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, representing groups in several exporting sectors, “the big prize” in CPTPP membership is access to Japan, a “high-value and stable market for agrifood products, importing $4 billion of Canadian agrifoods every year.”

The deal also affords Canadian agrifood exporters “a competitive advantage in the (CPTPP) region over the U.S., since it is not part of the agreement,” CAFTA said.

Grain Growers of Canada, among others, urged the Canadian government to be among the first six to ratify the deal, as “being part of the first wave will ensure that Canada can take full advantage of the initial round of tariff cuts.”

Noting the CPTPP countries make up nearly 27 per cent of Canada’s wheat export market, Kevin Bender, chair of the Alberta Wheat Commission said the deal will also “ensure that Canada isn’t losing market share to our main competitors within the CPTPP zone.”

The Canola Council of Canada noted that when tariffs are “fully eliminated” in Japan and Vietnam over five years, exports of Canadian canola oil and meal to those countries could increase by up to $780 million per year.

Markus Haerle, chair of Grain Farmers of Ontario, noted the deal “covers three important export markets for food-grade soybeans” — specifically, Japan, Vietnam and Malaysia — “and will improve access to pursue further growth.”

Cam Dahl, president of Cereals Canada, said the deal’s “benefits and influence are also expected to grow as potential new entrants such as Indonesia seek to join.”

GFO, Haerle added, “would like to see the agreement ratified without any non-tariff barriers inserted and to see a similar agreement with China get underway.”

‘The way forward’

The revised agreement eliminates some requirements of the original TPP demanded by U.S. negotiators, including rules to ramp up intellectual property protection of pharmaceuticals. Governments and activists of other member nations worry the changes will raise the costs of medicine.

The final version of the agreement was released in New Zealand on Feb. 21. The member countries are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.

“We’re proud … to show the world that progressive trade is the way forward, that fair, balanced, and principled trade is the way forward, and that putting citizens first is the way forward for the world when it comes to trade,” Canadian Trade Minister Francois-Phillippe Champagne said.

In January, Trump, who also has threatened to pull the U.S. out of the North American Free Trade Agreement, told the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that it was possible Washington might return to the TPP pact if it got a better deal. However, New Zealand’s trade minister said that was unlikely in the near term, while Japan has said altering the agreement now would be very difficult.

On Thursday, Munoz said CPTPP was not an agreement against anyone and several governments had said they want to join it.

Trump vowed on Thursday to impose a 25 per cent tariff on steel imports and 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports, although he said there would be exemptions for NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada.

He announced the plan for tariffs last week, rattling financial markets.

Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo, in Santiago for the CPTPP signing, told Reuters he would not allow the U.S. to use the tariffs to pressure it in the NAFTA talks. Champagne told Reuters that Canada would not accept duties or quotas from the U.S.

— Reporting for Reuters by Dave Sherwood and Felipe Iturrieta; writing by Dave Sherwood and Caroline Stauffer. Includes files from AGCanada.com Network staff.

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Trade officials had been meeting in Tokyo to resolve rifts including Canada’s insistence on protections for its cultural industries such as movies, TV and music.

An agreement is a win for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government, which has been lobbying hard to save the pact, originally called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In one of his first acts as U.S. president in January 2017, Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the original 12-nation treaty.

Abe has painted the deal as a spur to growth and reform in Japan and a symbol of commitment to free and multilateral trade at a time when Trump stresses “America First” policies.

A Canadian government source confirmed Ottawa would sign on to what’s called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTTP), saying it had “secured real gains.”

“We are happy to confirm the achievement of a significant outcome on culture as well as an improved arrangement on autos with Japan, along with the suspension of many intellectual property provisions of concern to Canadian stakeholders,” Canadian Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said Tuesday in a statement.

Champagne and Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay, in a separate statement later Tuesday, said the deal “will give the Canadian agricultural industry preferential access to all CPTPP countries and will provide new market access opportunities for a wide range of Canadian products, including meat, grains, pulses, maple syrup, wines and spirits, seafood and agri-food products.”

“The agreement reached in Tokyo today is the right deal,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“Our government stood up for Canadian interest and this agreement meets our objectives of creating and sustaining growth, prosperity and well paying middle class jobs today and for generations to come.”

‘Comforted’

Canadian Cattlemen’s Association president Dan Darling hailed Tuesday’s announcement as an “extremely positive development for Canada’s entire beef sector.”

The CCA noted Canadian beef, once a TPP deal is implemented, will “enjoy a competitive advantage” over U.S. beef in Japan, entering that country at the same preferential tariff rate as Australian beef.

The Canadian Pork Council said Tuesday that producers “can be comforted in knowing that Canadian pork will have competitive access to key markets such as Japan, and developing markets such as Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia.”

Canadian pork exports to nine of the pact’s 10 member countries in 2016 totalled 380,000 tonnes, worth over $1.4 billion, the council said.

The Canadian Meat Council said Tuesday it’s “confident that this deal has the potential to increase beef and pork sales by at least $500 million, creating the potential to support an additional 5,800 jobs here in Canada.”

TPP countries already take about 20 per cent of Canada’s wheat exports, according to Cereals Canada, which said Tuesday it expects “additional growth in existing markets like Japan as well as development in emerging customers” in Asia such as Vietnam.

“The elimination of all import tariffs on soy products as well as the comprehensive framework of rights and obligations applicable to the use of technical measures will provide invaluable support to Soy Canada’s target of a doubling of production to 13 million tonnes by 2027,” Soy Canada chair Mark Huston said in a separate release.

Dairy Farmers of Canada, however, on Tuesday cited reports that the new CPTPP deal will include the market access concessions originally agreed to in October 2015.

“Although the loss of the U.S. represents a loss of approximately 60 per cent of the original TPP market (gross domestic product), the original concessions to our domestic dairy market remain,” DFC said in a release. “How is this in the best interests of Canadians?”

‘Collective commitment’

Japanese Economy Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said the new CPTPP, or TPP-11, would be an “engine to overcome protectionism” emerging in parts of the world.

He added Japan would explain the importance of the deal to Washington in hopes of persuading it to join.

Ministers from the 11 countries, including Japan, Australia and Canada, agreed in November on core elements to move ahead without the U.S., but demands by countries including Canada for measures to ensure the deal protects jobs blocked a final agreement.

“This outcome reaffirms the CPTPP countries’ collective commitment towards greater trade liberalization and regional integration,” Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry said in a statement.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said last week the new agreement would leave a door open for eventual U.S. participation.

Canada, which wanted protection of its cultural industries, and Vietnam, which has worried about labour protection rules, will exchange separate side letters with other members on those topics at the time of the signing, Motegi said.

The timing of the deal is significant for Canada, which is trying to diversify its exports. Talks with Mexico and the U.S. on modernizing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have run into trouble and may fail.

— Reporting for Reuters by Kaori Kaneko and Takashi Umekawa in Tokyo; additional reporting by Jack Kim in Singapore and David Ljunggren in Montreal; writing by Linda Sieg. Includes files from AGCanada.com Network staff.

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The alliance, which comprises Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Peru, will on Friday admit Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Canada as associate members in a first step to broadening the reach of its trade flows and investments.

“I want to express our willingness to move towards greater integration through the creation of the associated state figure of the Pacific Alliance,” Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said at the Pacific Alliance summit in the Colombian city of Cali.

“This category will be obtained by countries with which the Pacific Alliance as a bloc subscribe to ambitious and high-standard economic-trade agreements with the purpose of consolidating and expanding integration as an instrument of economic development,” she said, adding that the block would fight against protectionism.

Canada’s Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said Thursday the country “welcomes” the alliance’s invitation to start negotiations for Canada’s associate membership.

“We recognize the importance and growing influence of the Pacific Alliance, and look forward to strengthening this key partnership that will, in turn, create more economic opportunities for our middle class,” he said in a release.

Alliance members are among the keenest proponents of free trade in the Americas and have backed Mexico after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement and tightened immigration controls.

“We are going to take important steps,” Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said, highlighting decisions made so far at the summit.

“We are going to register the creation of a common fund to finance infrastructure, we are going to open the alliance to associate members so that we can establish different relations with interested observers to affiliate in some way with the four countries that have the most dynamic economies in Latin America,” he said.

The alliance said Thursday it would explore whether to create a single passport for its four member nations in an effort to encourage tourism and trade across the world.

It also reached a tax agreement for pension funds operating in the bloc to stimulate investment in infrastructure projects. The maximum tax rate charged on pension fund investment returns will be 10 percent.

Also present at the summit are the presidents of Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto, and Peru, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.

The economies of the four member nations, if counted as a single country, would form the eighth-biggest economy in the world.

— Reporting for Reuters by Luis Jaime Acosta; writing by Helen Murphy. Includes files from AGCanada.com Network staff.

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