Medium Term Outlook for Canadian Agriculture

The purpose of this document is to describe the features of the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) Medium Term Outlook for Canadian Agriculture (previously entitled Medium Term Policy Baseline) covering the period 2007 to 2017. 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. The medium term assumptions used and published by the OECD/FAO in the Agricultural Outlook 2007-2016 are by in large maintained in the AAFC's international agricultural markets outlook but updated to reflect short term price forecasts produced and released by USDA in October 2007. The world prices generated by this process combined with the macro-economic forecast for Canada published by the Conference Board in September 2007 are the key inputs used to produce the Canadian agricultural markets outlook. The key sectors covered are grains, oilseeds and products, special crops, bio-fuels, beef/cattle, pork/hogs, milk and dairy products, chicken, turkey and eggs