Medium Term Outlook for Canadian Agriculture - International and Domestic Markets

The purpose of this document is to describe the features of the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) Medium Term Outlook for Canadian Agriculture covering the period 2009 to 2019. The outlook is an attempt to outline a plausible future of the international and domestic agri-food sectors. It serves as a benchmark for discussion and scenario analysis. The outlook makes specific assumptions and outlines their implications. Since it assumes that policies remain unchanged from existing legislation, the outlook is not a forecast of future events. In particular there are no assumptions made regarding the outcome of the Doha round of trade negotiations. It also assumes no impact from climate change and from policy to mitigate climate change nor significant animal disease outbreaks or unusual climatic conditions over the period of the outlook. The starting point of the international baseline is the so-called lower GDP slow recovery medium term scenario published in the OECD/FAO Agricultural Outlook 2009-2018. This scenario was updated in the short term using macro-economic forecasts released by the OECD in September 2009 and by the World Bank in June 2009. Exchange rates were updated to reflect the information released at the end of 2008 and in the first 6 months of 2009. The agricultural outlook was updated to reflect short term price forecasts produced and released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in October 2009.