The American Soybean Association (ASA) has recently become aware of an issue concerning dairy exports from the U.S. to Canada, which immediately impacts American dairy operations and could have an indirect impact both on soybean meal and on a potentially renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Calls are needed on the issue this week to House offices. Click here for the text of the letter, and here for an info sheet prepared by dairy groups on the issue. More soy-specific talking points on the issue are loaded into the Soy Action Center for your use.

New pricing requirements (or a classification system) have been implemented in Canada that specifically impedes the U.S.’s ability to sell dairy products into the Canadian market. This non-tariff barrier is particularly prohibitive and is resulting in a loss of contracts for U.S. dairy producers. The long term effect of this policy will not only harm U.S. dairy producers but has implications for an array of U.S. agriculture industries, including soybeans. ASA has long been a supporter of greater outcomes for dairy, eggs and poultry in free trade agreements and has expressed our desire to remedy outstanding dairy, poultry and egg issues with Canada in a renegotiated NAFTA.

We encourage all farmers to contact your members of Congress and ask them to sign on to the letter being circulating by Reps. Collins, DelBene, Kind, Duffy, Welch and Stefanik to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). Please click here to access the Soy Action Center for more background, talking points and to be connected with your lawmaker.

We have a goal of at least 10 emails from each state affiliate on this issue for a total of 260 from ASA. Considering that under the new affiliate framework, ASA does not send these Action Alerts to affiliate member farmers directly, please take this as a challenge to get farmers in your states involved. For those states that utilize their own grassroots advocacy systems other than the Soy Action Center, please let us know that you’ve been able to generate the emails through your own system.