Canada's Farm Sector Split on Mercosur Free Trade Deal

Canada and Mercosur, the South American trading bloc, are aiming to reach a free trade agreement by the end of 2026, and Canada's agriculture sector is divided on it.

Fertilizer Canada backs a deal as a way to grow crop nutrient exports, noting potash is Canada's largest export to Brazil, while the Canadian Cattle Youth Council warned it could jeopardize Canadian beef production.

The Canadian Federation of Agriculture says benefits are likely to be uneven and any deal must account for big gaps in production scale, costs and regulation between Canada and Mercosur.

Source: BNN Bloomberg / The Canadian Press

Canada and Mercosur, the South American trading bloc, are aiming to land a free trade deal by the end of 2026, and Canadian agriculture is split on whether it's a good idea.

🐮 Beef says no thanks. The Canadian Cattle Youth Council went to Parliament Hill in October to warn the deal could jeopardize Canadian beef production and pose food safety risks.

🧪 Potash says yes please. Fertilizer Canada CEO Michael Bourque wrote to Prime Minister Mark Carney earlier this year arguing a deal could cement Canada as a global crop nutrient supplier. Potash is already Canada's largest export to Brazil.

⚖️ The CFA picked "it's complicated." President Keith Currie says some sectors could win, but benefits will be uneven, and any deal has to reckon with huge differences in scale, costs, rules and market conditions.

Ottawa is in its "it's not you, it's me" era with Washington. Carney just left on a summit tour through Europe and Asia, including a planned meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, a trip analysts are calling a pivot away from the U.S., according to 620 CKRM.

Canada also recently agreed to swap Prairie canola for Chinese steel. So yes, we are now bartering. Somewhere a Hudson's Bay Company accountant is nodding approvingly.

Mercosur ticks the boxes: big, agricultural, and crucially, not headquartered in Washington.

Potash country gets a bigger customer list. If you live near a mine, this is the good news half of the story.

Cattle producers are worried about competing with a much bigger, lower-cost system. That's the core of Currie's warning about scale and cost structures, and it's why the youth council made the trip to the Hill instead of sending an email.

Grain is the question mark. Brazil and Argentina are not exactly short on crops of their own, so "access" cuts both ways.

Our read (inference, not in the reporting): nobody has seen deal text yet, so the farm-gate math lives entirely in chapters that haven't been written. Until then, this is a fight over vibes with a December deadline.

Unadjusted StatCan data show Saskatchewan netted 3,700 employee jobs from August to October. Sounds great, until you notice education workers heading back to class added 13,300 on their own.

Strip out the teachers and the rest of the economy shrank by 9,600 jobs in two months.

Forestry, mining and oil and gas dropped 3,000 jobs from the August peak, down more than 12% to a 13-month low. Wholesale and retail lost 2,000. Manufacturing hiring has basically stalled.

Average weekly paycheques in natural resources and agriculture fell by more than $105 since August. Your hired man noticed, even if the headline didn't.

Delegates at SARM's midterm convention on Nov. 18 will debate a resolution asking SARM to review rural municipality restructuring options, including amalgamation. The ask came from the RM of Corman Park, not the province.

Corman Park Reeve Joe Hargrave points to rising road, bridge and infrastructure costs. SARM president Bill Huber is saying nothing until delegates vote, which is the most Saskatchewan sentence ever written.

The numbers: 296 RMs serving about 176,000 people, roughly 600 residents each. The smallest, Glen McPherson, has 72 people and shares an administrator with Mankota.

Last time this came up, around 2000, the Garcea report proposed shrinking about 1,006 local governments to fewer than 125. Rural Saskatchewan reacted roughly how you'd react to someone backing a grain truck over your mailbox. The RM count hasn't changed since.

The Rural Community Immigration Program goes permanent on Jan. 1, 2027, with planned admissions of 5,500 in 2027, 6,000 in 2028 and 6,500 in 2029.

Applicants need a job offer from a designated employer and a recommendation from a participating community. The Express Entry target drops to 100,000 from 111,000, while the Provincial Nominee Program rises to 95,000.

A proposed March 1, 2027 change would let rural communities keep broader access to the low-wage temporary foreign worker stream.

Our read (inference): the article doesn't mention agriculture specifically, but rural employers short on hands should check whether their community is in. Fair warning, 5,500 spots for an entire country is less "open door" and more "doggy door."

Kentucky farmer Jonathan Royster runs about 9,000 acres with a John Deere See & Spray Ultimate and says it saved him roughly $100,000 in one season.

His chemical use dropped 34% on burndown, 51% over-the-top in corn and 65% over-the-top in soybeans.

In Iowa, Michael Gallagher retrofitted a 2019 Hagie with Precision Planting's SymphonyVision Spot and reports a 30% to 40% drop in whole-farm chemical costs.

Deere says See & Spray has covered more than 10 million acres since its 2022 debut, and growers are now running late-season spot passes to shrink the weed seed bank.

Prairie translation (inference): these are U.S. corn and soybean operations, so don't go promising your banker 65% just yet. The real crossover is herbicide resistance, where hitting only the weeds that showed up beats carpet-bombing the whole quarter.

The feds granted an emergency approval for 2% strychnine in March 2026, giving Alberta and Saskatchewan farmers access to fight Richardson's ground squirrels. The temporary registration runs until November 2027.

In Wheatland County, Premium Ag partner Matt Gosling says the impact on crop protection this year was close to zero. A lottery system and mandatory training held up the product until well after it was needed.

Farmers need it in March or April, before populations boom and crops emerge. His verdict: "This year it was too little too late."

So to recap: Kentucky has cameras that identify individual weeds at field speed. Alberta has a raffle for gopher bait. Both are technically precision agriculture.

A USDA undercover sting toppled the Easterling family's cockfighting operation in Chilton County, Alabama, a property USDA says housed roughly 4,000 birds.

Patriarch William "Big Jim" Easterling, 77, oversaw two outfits, L&L Gamefarm and Swift Creek Gamefarm, plus the "Poor Man's Club" derbies in a custom barn with two pits and seating for about 150.

Marketing strategy: openly advertised on social media, flyers and group texts. For a federal felony. Bold.

Undercover USDA agents bought birds and attended derbies for years. In February 2021, Big Jim actually asked the agents if they were wearing recording devices. Reader, they were.

The 100-count indictment covered 2018 to 2021 and included a shipment of 120 cockfighting knives from Mexico that customs intercepted. About 150 USDA and DOJ officers executed the search warrants.

Sentences in November 2022: Brent got 24 months, Billy 22, Tyler 20. Big Jim got two years of home detention, an $8,000 fine and an order to tear down the barn.

The kicker: under Alabama state law, cockfighting is a misdemeanor with a maximum $50 fine. Turns out the feds are less relaxed about it.

Pulcher threw his chickens in the sea and lost a war. The Easterlings put theirs in a pit and lost a farm. Respect the chickens.

Arcola, Sask. hobbyist Ivan Paradis has built more than 80 miniature grain elevator replicas since about 2000, working from photographs, never blueprints.

He showed his work at the Thunder Creek Model Railroad Club's show in Moose Jaw for the first time on Nov. 7 and 8, and still has 39 of them.

Some go on model railways, others become keepsakes for families whose grandparents delivered grain to the real thing. One was an 85th birthday gift for the owner of a century-old elevator in Tilston, Man.

He sells some for about what the materials cost, which makes him the only person in Prairie grain handling not charging you for the privilege.

Cleanfarms launched Manitoba's first Great Twine Round-Up Contest, running Nov. 1, 2026 to May 31, 2027.

Bag clean used baler twine, drop it at a participating Cleanfarms collection site, snap a selfie with it and submit online. Four $3,000 prizes ($12,000 total) go to the winner's choice of local 4-H club or Manitoba ag charity.

Early-bird deadline is Jan. 31, 2027. Alberta's version, now in year three, has pulled in about 4.5 million kilograms of ag plastics.

Finally, a use for that twine nest behind the shop besides wrapping itself around the PTO shaft.

That's how much additional gross revenue Saskatchewan farmers could have earned in 2024 by growing higher-yielding crop varieties, according to University of Saskatchewan research cited by Seed World Canada.

The researchers call it a benchmark, not money lost, so nobody needs to go yell at their seed rep.

But some of the province's most popular pea and lentil varieties date back to the 2000s. Some of those genetics are old enough to have a learner's licence.

Don't start seeding or harvest today.

Do start your twine pile.

Feed the chickens. Don't throw them in the sea, and definitely don't put them in a pit.

And if you ever feel the need to ask the new guy whether he's wearing a wire, you already have your answer.