The federal ag lender on Tuesday said it will offer an unsecured credit line of up to $500,000 with loan processing fees waived, “to help producers, agribusinesses and agri-food operations with their immediate cash flow needs.”

FCC said it’s making the offer to both new and existing customers who are “experiencing financial difficulties, including cash flow challenges, due to higher-than-average input costs and elevated interest rates.”

While the Bank of Canada has maintained its policy rate since January, FCC warned in a March outlook that “additional intervention” could still be required to get inflation to two per cent.

Elevated inflation and interest rates are expected to slow consumer spending and business investments, FCC said in March, adding that if the U.S. Federal Reserve continues raising its policy rate, that could lead to a lower Canadian dollar if the Bank of Canada extends its pause.

A global economic slowdown has also resulted in lower growth in Canadian ag and food export volume, FCC said at the time.

Cost pressures in the “current economic environment” are difficult to pass on, FCC said Tuesday, and that’s led to “tough financial circumstances for some operations.”

“While the current experiences of individual operations within the different agriculture and food sectors are varied, we hope those who identify with these challenges will use this credit line as an opportunity to work through their current position and build back stronger than before,” FCC chief operating officer Sophie Perreault said in a release.

FCC reiterated it can offer flexibility to customers who are going through “challenging business cycles and unpredictable circumstances” on a case-by-case basis, such as through flexible payment options, payment deferrals or credit lines.

For example, the lender said last Thursday it would consider additional short-term credit options, deferral of principal payments and/or other loan payment schedule amendments for customers in B.C.’s wine sector up against financial hardship following “prolonged cold temperatures” last winter that caused significant damage to wine grapevines.

FCC said May 16 it would also consider similar supports for maple syrup producers in Eastern Canada following an “unfavourable change in temperature this spring” that shortened the maple syrup harvest in most parts of the region.

“This limited harvest can cause financial challenges for farm operations – not to mention personal hardship and stress,” Manon Duguay, FCC’s vice-president of operations for Quebec and Atlantic Canada, said in a separate release at the time.

“We stand by our customers over the long term, helping them pursue opportunities and overcome challenges, and this year’s unfavourable temperature has certainly been challenging for many maple syrup business owners.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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A group of people in Quebec siphoned off maple syrup worth over $18 million from a reservoir and replaced it with water, before authorities discovered the robbery in 2012, in what has been dubbed the “great Canadian maple syrup heist.”

Richard Vallieres, who was among the 16 people arrested by police, was found guilty of fraud, trafficking and theft and sentenced to eight years in prison and fined over $9 million by the Quebec Superior Court.

Vallieres had successfully appealed that ruling, getting his fine lowered to about $1 million — the amount Vallieres says he profited from the robbery.

However, Canada’s Chief Supreme Court Justice Richard Wagner said that a court cannot limit the amount of a fine to the profit made by an offender and gave Vallieres 10 years to pay the fine or serve six years in prison.

Julie Giroux, the lawyer representing Vallieres, said her client was disappointed by the court’s decision to restore the initial amount imposed by the first judge and the gravity of having to bear such a substantial fine.

While the value of the stolen amber condiment was much higher, Vallieres sold the syrup for only $10 million, he told the Quebec Superior Court during his trial.

Canada is the largest exporter of maple products, and Quebec holds the world’s only strategic reserve of the sweet topping. Last year, maple syrup producers started releasing more than half of the reserve to ease a syrup squeeze as the pandemic boosted demand as more people started eating at home.

— Reporting for Reuters by Ismail Shakil in Bangalore; additional reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal.

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Federal Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough announced Nov. 27 the national commodity list (NCL) would be expanded to include seed corn, oil seed, grains and maple syrup — a move which allows farmers who produce those products to seek employees via SAWP.

The NCL helps determine eligibility and pay within the primary agricultural stream of the federal Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program. Access to SAWP and the TFW agricultural stream is limited to employers hiring workers for commodities specifically listed on the NCL.

SAWP is the stream most commonly used in Canadian primary agriculture; it provided 46,707 approved positions in 2019, with 12,858 coming from participating Caribbean countries and the rest from Mexico, the government said.

The NCL — which applies to both seasonal and non-seasonal work — already includes apiary products, fruits and vegetables, mushrooms, flowers; nursery-grown trees, greenhouse and nursery plants, pedigreed canola seed, sod, tobacco, beef and dairy cattle, swine, sheep, poultry and ducks, horses and mink among its other primary ag commodities.

SAWP employees and other TFWs were allowed to enter Canada in 2020 as essential workers under new federal limits on entry to Canada at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The government reiterated in its announcement Nov. 27 that COVID outbreaks, which led to illnesses and several deaths among Canada’s TFW labour force during 2020, have since prompted moves to update the minimum requirements for employer-provided TFW accommodations.

Consultations on those proposals began in late October and run until Dec. 22.

The Canadian Seed Trade Association, for one, hailed Qualtrough’s expansions to the NCL, saying the inclusion of seed corn on the list gives companies in that sector “access to labour that is urgently needed.”

Seed corn companies “traditionally rely on local high school students to fulfil their temporary labour demands in the summer and have had difficulty accessing the number of workers needed, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the CSTA said Nov. 30 in a separate release.

The CSTA said it expects access to labour will “remain a large challenge looking ahead to 2021.”

Given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the government said employers and workers who use the TFW program or SAWP are “encouraged to apply early to avoid any delays.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The federal government on May 1 announced “modernized” beer standards under Canada’s Food and Drug Regulations (FDR) — the rules laying out the requirements to be met by a product labelled, packaged, sold and advertised as beer in Canada.

The FDR updates are expected to allow brewers to “develop new products by using new ingredients and flavouring preparations while maintaining the integrity of beer,” the government said in a release, while offering more “clarity on what constitutes standardized beer.”

For instance, the new rules clarify the term “carbohydrate” and clarify that herbs and spices are allowed. Apart from cereal grains and flavouring preparations, the rules also allow for addition of “honey, maple syrup, fruit, fruit juice or any other source of carbohydrates.”

The updated rules also remove listed processing aids from the beer standard, making it more consistent with most of the 300-plus food standards covered in the FDR which don’t list processing aids, such as antifoaming agents used during manufacturing.

“A modernized beer standard allows Canadian brewers to develop a new range of products that meet the tastes of our consumers,” Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said in the government’s release.

But the FDR will now also require beer labels to declare food allergens, gluten sources and/or added sulphites. Flavouring preparations will also have to be declared, such as, say, “beer with blueberry flavour.”

Such a declaration must either be included in the list of ingredients — which, as with all standardized alcoholic beverages, is voluntary for beer — or be added as a statement, such as, say, “Contains: Sulphites.”

Those requirements “will give consumers assurance that the beer they drink will not pose a risk to their health because of a food allergy or food sensitivity,” Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor said in the same release.

The updates also set a limit of four per cent residual sugar — that is, the sugars left in the product after fermentation is completed. The limit is meant to “distinguish standardized beer from sweeter malt-based beverages.”

‘Distinct’

The updated standard is also expected to reduce “duplication” in the FDR as it removes the standard for ale, stout, porter and malt liquor — which was “virtually identical” to the standard for beer — to have just one standard for all beer styles and types.

The changes to the FDR must be applied starting Dec. 14, 2022. Until then, the government said, Canadian brewers and beer importers “must follow either the previous or the new requirements.”

The requirements for compositional standards under the FDR only apply on products traded interprovincially or imported into Canada.

The new rules “will ensure beer is treated as distinct from other beverage alcohol categories for decades to come,” Luke Harford, president of trade association Beer Canada, said in the sam release. “We are pleased to see that the changes permit the use of new ingredients and recognize beer as a beverage alcohol product that is low in sugars.”

According to the government’s impact analysis statement, the FDR’s beer standards “had not previously undergone a major amendment for at least 30 years” while the industry “had recently been seeking the use of more ingredients than was permitted by the compositional standard.”

Some small craft breweries, the government said, “may experience difficulty in complying with the requirements because of limited financial resources.”

Also, the government granted, some products “may not meet the modernized beer standard and will have to be sold as unstandardized alcoholic beverages and not be represented as beer.”

Also, the government said, the FDR updates could potentially impact trade with other countries that don’t have the same beer compositional standard. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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While small in dollar value, the tariff shows how Canada’s retaliation has turned a dispute over metals into a broader conflict, touching many sectors.

Quebec accounted for about 72 per cent of the world’s production in 2017, but U.S. producers were eating into Canada’s market share.

Vermont is the biggest syrup producer in the U.S., but most of Canada’s imports come from Maine, according to data from Statistics Canada.

“The government here is trying to have maximum political impact, so that members of Congress, whether senators or congress-people, put pressure on Trump to say look, this is hurting us,” said Patrick Leblond, a trade expert at the University of Ottawa.

Canada last week proposed tariffs on goods ranging from ballpoint pens to mattresses to toilet paper, after the U.S. said it would impose 25 per cent and 10 per cent duties on Canadian steel and aluminum.

The list also includes a 10 per cent duty on maple sugar and syrup. In 2017, Canada imported $16.9 million worth of those goods, three-quarters of which came from Maine.

Because Canadian trade data combines sugar and syrup, it is not clear what proportion of Maine’s syrup was exported. The state produced about 3.5 million kg of syrup in 2017, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

A Canadian government source, speaking broadly about how targets were chosen, said the government sought products that could be found easily outside the U.S., and focused on final goods to avoid distorting supply chains.

With only four electoral votes, Maine does not have the political clout of large swing states targeted by the tariffs, like Florida. But one of the state’s senators is Susan Collins, a Republican, who has repeatedly criticized Trump.

Lyle Merrifield, president of the Maine Maple Producers Association, said he does not expect the tariff to have a huge impact, but he criticized Trump’s tariffs.

“I think it’s unfortunate,” he said. “I think it’s a little ridiculous, really. I don’t blame Canada for doing it back.”

The Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers controls the market, issuing quotas and maintaining a Global Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve, which stockpiles syrup to stabilize prices.

The industry directly supports about 10,000 full-time jobs in Quebec, which has a provincial election scheduled later this year.

Alexandre Moreau, who wrote a critical report about the quota system for the conservative institute earlier this year, said the tariff will help the Federation amid growing imports from the U.S., where prices have dropped.

“It becomes cheaper and cheaper to import U.S. maple syrup,” he said. “In the long run, it’s kind of worrisome for Quebec producers.”

— Allison Martell is a senior Reuters correspondent in Toronto.

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Walker was working in a trade show booth as he told me this, one of the representatives of the 23 Canadian businesses that were participating at the 31st Aahar Food Hospitality Trade Fair held in New Delhi in March.

Some 872 companies from 22 countries were at the show to stimulate Indian demand for their products.

They know that while newspaper headlines can seem transfixed on China, India’s economy is booming too. According to the World Bank, India’s GDP growth is expected to end up at 7.9 per cent this year, enough to make it the fastest growing economy on the planet, even outpacing the Chinese dragon with its 7.0 per cent.

Although India is the world’s largest pulse producer, El Niño weather patterns helped set off consecutive droughts in 2014 and 2015 that have put the country into a serious deficit for this vital staple food. “India produces around 18 million tonnes of pulses but they need 22 to 23 million tonnes every year,” says Parthi Muthukumarasamy, a specialist in agriculture and agri-food at the High Commission of Canada. As a result, India needs 5.5 million tonnes of pulses, and it needs them more or less now.

In 2015, Canada sourced 40 per cent of India’s pulse imports, mainly in red lentils and yellow peas. From $900 million in 2014, our pulse exports to India jumped to $1.5 billion in 2015, marking a 60 per cent increase.

It all means that Lance Walker had real work to do at the Aahar Trade Fair. But the Saskatchewan producer wasn’t only trying to sell red lentils to his visitors, he also welcomed them with samples of canola oil.

India imports US$14 billion in vegetable oil per year which makes the country the world’s largest importer. Currently it mainly buys palm oil (65 per cent market share) from Indonesia, soy oil from Argentina (25 per cent) and sunflower oil from Ukraine (15 per cent).

“India is one of the countries that has the highest incidence of diabetes and cholesterol,” says Muthukumarasamy, who is working closely with the Canola Council of Canada, based in Winnipeg. “If we promote its health benefits, canola oil could carve itself an incredible market share in India.”

Although India’s society is generally strongly opposed to GMOs, canola oil has been approved because, unlike the plant, the oil itself does not contain GM proteins.

Sweet dreams

Standing at his booth, Antoine Pfister has a dream. “Imagine if every gulab jamun would be served with maple syrup,” he says.

Pfister was hired three years ago to develop the Indian market on behalf of the Quebec co-operative, Citadelle, the world’s largest maple syrup producer and exporter.

Gulab jamun is a small, fried doughnut served with syrup, and Indians crave them. There isn’t a neighbourhood in New Delhi that doesn’t have its sweet shop. The Indian tiger has a sweet tooth!

“We are looking at the high-end markets in the megacities such as Dehli, Mumbai and Bangalore,” explains Pfister, who is as passionate about maple syrup as Walker is about his lentils and canola oil. To Pfister, maple syrup is a super-food full of health-building natural antioxidants.

India’s economic boom has fostered the growth of a new, youthful middle class that travels and that is much more health conscious than their parents. Current surveys put this group at 350 million consumers, which is larger than the U.S. population.

Muthukumarasamy sees opportunities for a number of Canadian products in India such as malting barley, rapeseed mustard, red kidney beans and even seafood such as fresh salmon, which is entering now from Norway and Scotland. But, he warns, “Canadian companies have to understand and commit themselves to India.”

India is a price-sensitive market, he points out, but success also hinges on developing personal relationships.

McCain inspires India’s PM?

While in India at the high commission reception held in honour of the Canadian companies attending the Aahar Fair, I met Kunai Yadav, general manager for McCain Foods India.

McCain has been established in India since 1990. The company has been growing its own potato varieties here and processing them in its plant located in the state of Gujarat.

McCain is the supplier of fast-food giant McDonald’s, and the company is also capitalizing on the booming of India’s new middle class. Like their Western counterparts, young Indian professionals have less time to cook, so the easy-to-prepare McCain frozen samosas are scoring big.

The first question Yadav asked me, however, was whether I had the green light from McCain’s head office in Florenceville, New Brunswick, so he could talk to me.

Although I have often tried to get an interview and a plant visit, none of my recent requests to the vice-president, government, public relations and corporate affairs offices were answered. But Yadav was kind enough to respond to a key question: does the company have trouble ensuring an unbroken chain of cold storage facilities for its products at every stage from the fields to the fork?

“No. We have invested and developed our own cold storage facilities,” he answered.

It’s a reasonable question, we seem to agree, since the country’s enormous rate of food loss is often in the news, referencing studies that show up to 40 per cent of Indian food rots before it gets to consumers.

In fact, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is making food processing a national priority. He is improving railways, roadways, and air navigation, and he is inviting local and foreign companies to invest in 42 mega food parks that will incorporate processing facilities and modern cold storage.

As Gujarat is Narendra Modi’s turf, one can wonder if McCain has inspired India’s prime minister to replicate the Canadian model to other states of India.

Olymel and McCain’s bacon in India

In a separate phone interview, Jacques Pomerleau, president of Canada Pork International, explains his group is seeking a free trade agreement with India that would allow Canadian pork to enter India, mainly by eliminating non-tariff barriers.

Inevitably, it raises the expected question. Why would he invest his time and energy in trying to sell pork in a country that is 80 per cent vegetarian and 20 per cent Muslim?

“Those 1.3 billion Indians are not all vegetarians by choice,” Pomerlau reports after two missions to India. “As their income grows, they want to eat quality meat, and the Muslims are no exception.”

Pomerleau estimates that 60 million consumers in India are interested in eating Olymel or McCain bacon. That, he points out, is nearly double the Canadian population.

A Canada Pork International mission is scheduled next fall with the help of Canada’s agriculture counsellor, Parthi Muthukumarasamy, to promote Canadian pork in high-end hotel chains in major cities.

Meanwhile, a growing number of farm groups are reaching the same conclusion. As the Indian tiger awakens, it seems to like the taste of Canada.

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The two governments on Tuesday announced separate AgriRecovery programs, budgeted at up to $2.69 million for fruit growers and up to $950,000 for maple syrup producers.

The Fire Blight Initiative is expected to help tree fruit growers with an “industry-led strategy” to bring fire blight under control and leave the least potential for future damage.

Post-tropical storm Arthur caused significant damage to the province’s apple and pear orchards in 2014, leading to a provincewide outbreak of fire blight affecting 95 per cent of orchards, the governments said.

Fire blight affects mainly apple and pear trees, damaging or killing blossoms and/or damaging fruit. If not properly managed, the governments said, the bacterial disease can cause “significant damage and loss” for producers.

“This will help the Nova Scotia apple industry reinvest money to continue to produce high-value fruit and capitalize on the strong export market the industry has developed,” Andrew Parker, president of the Nova Scotia Fruit Growers Association, said in Tuesday’s release.

The governments estimate the Nova Scotia tree fruit industry’s farm cash receipts at nearly $16 million per year.

The Canada-Nova Scotia Maple Sector Initiative, meanwhile, is expected to help maple syrup producers with the recovery costs to re-establish sap collection systems damaged by excessive snowfall during the winter of 2015.

The excessive snow led to “significant damage and severe setbacks” for syrup producers, the governments said, as about 40 per cent of farmed maple trees couldn’t be tapped. Lines and taps were buried in snow and producers couldn’t access their trees.

“This funding will help our maple producers get back on their feet so they can look forward to a good production this spring and in the years to come,” said Drew Hunter, president of the Maple Producers Association of Nova Scotia, in the government’s release.

More information on both AgriRecovery programs is expected to be available “in the coming days” at AgPal.ca and through the provincial ag department.

The disaster recovery portion of the Growing Forward 2 federal/provincial ag policy funding framework, AgriRecovery is meant to respond to unforeseen disasters that result in “extraordinary” costs for producers.

AgriRecovery is also meant to respond in situations where producers don’t have the capacity to cover the extraordinary costs, even with assistance available under programs such as AgriStability, AgriInvest or AgriInsurance. — AGCanada.com Network

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