The Chief Agricultural Economist with Farm Credit Canada is encouraging agriculture sector stakeholders to assess their exposure to risk and consider strategies to reduce those risks.
Farm Credit Canada has identified climate change, protectionism and automation as the three key forces that have the potential to disrupt the global economy and shape Canada’s agriculture and food industry outlook in 2020.
J.P. Gervais, FCC’s Chief Agricultural Economist, says the test is how Canadian farm operations, agri-businesses and food processors will adapt to mitigate the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities.
What we have done is actually build on a report by Bloomberg that identified five disrupters. We narrowed the list down to three because what we’re doing is actually taking their report and bringing it down to the level of Canadian farm production as well as food processing. What they’ve done is identify five disrupters and look at different countries readiness to take on these disruptions as well as thrive from an economic standpoint.
Canada is doing well on a number of different fronts when it comes to their readiness to being disrupted from five disrupters. We’re focussing on three, mostly climate, trade or trade tensions and automation. We think that these three have the most potential to influence profitability, challenges and opportunities of Canadian agricultural producers as well as food processors.
I think the first step is to really to assess where you stand from a risk management standpoint. The pace of change has been going up in recent years and this pace of change is not likely to slow down. I think it’s good timing, if you haven’t done so, to reassess what risk management do you have?
~ J.P. Gervais, Farm Credit Canada
Gervais says, once you have assessed your level of exposure, you can determine if you are comfortable with that level of risk and, if not, examine the mitigation strategies that can be put in place to lower risk.
