National Association of Wheat Growers and U.S. Wheat Associates
Caitlin Eannello, Director of Communications, National Association of Wheat Growers, (240) 423-4345, ceannello@wheatworld.org
Steve Mercer, Vice President of Communications, U.S. Wheat Associates, (703) 650-0251, smercer@uswheat.org
Washington, D.C. — The National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG) and U.S. Wheat Associates (USW) welcome the Administration’s decision to move ahead with an updated trade deal with Canada and Mexico and look forward to learning more about the details.
We are pleased that the Administration recognizes the need for policy certainty with some of our top customers. While NAWG and USW must review the language of the new deal, we hope to see provisions that are positive for wheat farmers.
The current North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is critically important for wheat farmers who depend on the enormous Mexican market that NAFTA built, but it did have room for improvements, particularly on grain trade with Canada. NAWG and USW called for a fix to the Canadian grain grading system which automatically designates U.S. wheat as the lowest grade simply because it is foreign. This means U.S. farmers producing the highest quality wheat arbitrarily get less value for their crop.
Farmers should understand that nothing has changed yet, but we are pleased to see that USTR has made progress in resolving this issue, with Canada agreeing to grade imported wheat with the same requirements as Canadian wheat. We will follow the implementation of this commitment closely to ensure U.S. farmers can finally have reciprocal access to the Canadian market.
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