Lessons for Canada from New Zealand’s dairy industry

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Lessons for Canada from New Zealand’s dairy industry

Tiny New Zealand, with a population just one-eighth that of Canada, is on a quest to quench the world’s thirst for milk. Today milk is the country’s biggest export, and 95 per cent of what Kiwi farmers produce goes abroad, mostly to China.

Compare that to Canada, where dairy farmers keep fighting to protect their supply management system, which means higher milk prices for consumers and puts a strain on Canada’s trading relationships. Only five per cent of what Canada produces is exported.

While Canada is wringing its hands about what to do about the dairy sector, the question to ask is: Will ending supply management spell doom for Canadian dairy farmers?

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How the TPP opens new markets for Ontario wine

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How the TPP opens new markets for Ontario wine

When Canada and the U.S. agreed to a landmark free trade deal nearly 30 years ago, John Neufeld worried that his 73-hectare vineyard was doomed. At the time, the farm supplied grapes to nearby wineries, which had little faith that their products could compete against better-known — and superior — California wines.

“The information we had at that time was that California, with the reduction [in tariffs], would just come in and take over the Ontario marketplace,” Neufeld recalls. He was so worried that he ripped out all of his vines in the late 1980s. For several years, the farm grew only peaches and other tree fruits.

He was so wrong. Not only does he grow grapes again, but his vineyard, now named Palatine Hills Estates Winery, won many awards for his own vintages.

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How the TPP could cripple Big Syrup

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How the TPP could cripple Big Syrup

WHEN DAVID AND LUCY MARVIN started Butternut Mountain Farm in the mid-1970s, they wanted to try the road less taken. So David, a trained forester, turned to maple sugaring. “It was pretty unusual at the time,” says his daughter, Emma. 

The season in Johnson, Vt., for harvesting sap only lasts a brief six weeks every spring. But that narrow margin for error belies a long-term nature of the investment: Red maple and sugar maple trees have to be about 40 years old before their sap can be harvested for the first time. They can then continue to be tapped for the rest of their lives, sometimes a couple of centuries. 

Butternut Mountain is now one of the largest producers and distributors of syrup in the country, with 17,000 taps spread over 1,200 acres, a 75,000-square-foot processing and distribution facility, and 90 full-time employees. 

Today, business for the Marvins and their fellow American syrup producers is poised to boom, thanks not just to the technological revolution in the age-old art of sugaring but because of a free trade deal on the other side of the world.

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How TPP could make things sticky for Quebec’s maple syrup producers

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How TPP could make things sticky for Quebec’s maple syrup producers

Sugaring season is still several months off yet, but American maple syrup producer Emma Marvin is already thinking about selling her syrup into the Pacific. “Japan and South Korea certainly offer really interesting markets,” she said. “There is considerable opportunity there.”

Marvin is a second-generation owner of Butternut Mountain Farm, one of the largest producers and distributors of maple syrup in Vermont. Her business is just one example of an American firm that stands to gain under the recently announced Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the trade agreement among 12 countries that surround the Pacific, including Canada and the United States, which is currently awaiting ratification.

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