Not long after posting today’s first blog entry on the Farm Bill officially becoming law I ran into an interesting article over at OilWeek.com. Is seems that the Canadian Association of Agri-Retailers is already complaining about the unfair advantage American agriculture now has since the new Farm bill "includes tax credits and grants to enhance security of crop nutrients, herbicides and pesticides".
Two Canadian organizations, the retailers and the Grain Growers of Canada, are trying to get the Canadian government to come across with similar grants or tax credits to level the playing field. They are afraid that they will be faced with the problem of paying for increased chemical security out-of-pocket and not being able to pass those costs on to their customers. After all, those customers could go to American suppliers.
This brings up an interesting possibility; Canadian agricultural chemical suppliers could ask NAFTA to throw out those grants and tax credits as an unfair government subsidy of agricultural production. Wouldn’t that be fun?
Here we thought the Farm Bill fight was over until the 2012 reauthorization rolls around.
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