# Tom Vilsack On NAFTA.....North and South.



## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

From AgWeb.

Regards, Mike

http://www.milkbusiness.com/article/vilsack-says-nafta-focus-should-be-on-canada


----------



## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

90% of Canada lives within 100 miles of the USA border. Let them see how they do without us. Me; I live in Maine and am surrounded by them, we have always known what a squeeze they put on us. I see no issue with leveling the playing field, but they won't like it.


----------



## slowzuki (Mar 8, 2011)

I'm one of those Canadians - the squeeze most of the people around here put on Maine is going over there to buy everything that is a consumer good and cutting the Canadian retailers out. I can't take even a ham sandwich with me to the US but I can fill my truck with hundreds of dollars of groceries and goods and come back.

I know our trees end up in Maine quite often but it's about the only thing we have to export from here.

There are Maine contractors up here building overpasses but I've never heard of Canadian contractors allowed to work in the US.

I know there is a gas pipeline under the border too but it's been slowing down and they have a proposal to reverse it and export to Canada in the next couple of years.



RuttedField said:


> 90% of Canada lives within 100 miles of the USA border. Let them see how they do without us. Me; I live in Maine and am surrounded by them, we have always known what a squeeze they put on us. I see no issue with leveling the playing field, but they won't like it.


----------



## slowzuki (Mar 8, 2011)

I should add, the reason everyone buys stuff down there is it's cheaper. Everything is just plain more expensive here except trees and hay.


----------



## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

If it was only that simple!

The reason we are not buying natural gas is because the wood market is so bad here that it is cheaper to burn biomass and make electricity and operate steam for the paper mills (what few that are left) and saw mills (what few are left) then burn cheap natural gas. I say cheap because natural gas is cheap, it is just that biomass is only 50 cents a ton American Currency right now making it even cheaper.

But if you don't like the price of Natural Gas now, just wait.

Trump just passed into law the Coal Bill lifting restrictions on coal power plants and so it is going to further drive down the price of biomass and natural gas. But at least Nova Scotia has coal which sadly Maine does not, so we don't even have that going for us.

My woodlot is currently netting me $25 per acre, per year (because a tree takes 35 years to grow after all), yet my property taxes are $28 per acre, per year. That math just does not compute.

But then neither does a local paper mill buying a trainload of wood out of New Brunswick every day (100 plus train cars) or buying wood from Finland; when I am 40 miles away and they won't even take it...and I am even a certified "green" tree farm. After awhile a landowner gets sick of people selling their junk wood to use, taking our best saw logs (because they are subsidized), sawing them into lumber, then shipping the wood back down to our Home Depot's to sell.

You keep your wood, we will keep our wood. Now that extends to milk too it seems.


----------



## slowzuki (Mar 8, 2011)

Our wood is worthless too. We mostly get nothing and most of the value added is done in the US. US mills hold cutting licenses here and take all the wood off the lease and don't process any here.

The Brazilian And finish pulp mills have wiped out almost all our pulp mills.


----------



## slowzuki (Mar 8, 2011)

Biomass here won't even pay the trucker to haul it to the plant.


----------



## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

The State is now subsidizing Biomass just to give it a place to go, but a year is already up on a 4 year term. They already said they will not renew it.

A local sawmill is putting in (2) biomass boilers, but only because it is subsidized, but they are about 5 miles from a major gas pipeline coming out of New Brunswick. I predict once the State Subsidy is over, they will switch their boilers over to natural gas, dig a pipeline the 5 miles to the gas pipeline and burn gas. Heck it will be cheaper then because coal power plants are up and running. This will not only leave the loggers of Maine in the lurch, but defraud the Maine Taxpayer who has been paying for the subsidy.

Sadly I have seen this before. The Bucksport Paper Mill claimed they could not make it due to energy costs, had the state bring in Natural Gas from the New Brunswick pipeline, then as soon as their boilers were running, shut down the paper side of the business...600 jobs lost. But the boilers, oh those are making power...on Mainer's dime with no jobs to show for it.


----------



## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

To me the blame really resides in the University of Maine. They are a land grant University for this state and as such have their hand in the till for 100 million per year. They even got Maine Taxpayers to fund a wood development program, and it was good...cutting edge stuff...but it is cutting edge stuff. No company wants to go out on a limb and start that stuff. Instead they could have been figuring out new uses for paper. Like the paper mill by me that is running. It is putting in a new paper machine this year (Federally Subsidized due to the economic impact logging has in Maine) at 250 million dollars, but it is medical paper that has antibacterial properties in it that kill infection. No Neosporin needed. Now that is innovative, BUT uses paper mills already hiring hundreds of workers. What the University of Maine was developing was wild, pie in the sky ideas that are 50 years ahead of their time.

In the end we have a lot of unemployed people paying the University of Maine's 100 million dollar per year addiction with no let up in sight.

Of course when I need something on the farm the University of Maine Cooperative Extension hands me a brochure and says "read it" and walks off. Useless in other words, but if they do put on a seminar, watch out, they require $100 registration fees. Well what about the $100 million we pay in to fund the stupid place?

I don't mind a wood development program, but it should have been tailored for a new use for an old product. I have often wondered about roads. Surely there is a wood rein that could bind wood chips. It is absolutely stupid to pump oil out of the ground half way around the world, haul it over here just to drive on it. But when 90% of the USA's aggregate companies parent company can be traced back to the Dominican Republic as a single entity, it makes you wonder if a Trump Historic Public Works Plan will really net the USA anything (or for Canada for that matter).

BTW: I know Maine was illegally stolen from New Brunswick many years ago, so sorry about that.


----------



## slowzuki (Mar 8, 2011)

Well, I think they finally settled on a fair border location later on. New Brunswick and Maine families have been intertwined forever in this backwoods corner of north america. Northern Maine and north western NB were sort of independent, the Republic of Madawaska, I don't think anyone bothered to ask them when the Brits and US drew a line through the middle of them.

Really NB and Maine are in the same boat. Fishing and logging based economies, failed government initiatives at job creation and companies taking advantage of the desperate governments for tax breaks and subsidies.



RuttedField said:


> BTW: I know Maine was illegally stolen from New Brunswick many years ago, so sorry about that.


----------



## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

RuttedField said:


> 90% of Canada lives within 100 miles of the USA border. Let them see how they do without us. Me; I live in Maine and am surrounded by them, we have always known what a squeeze they put on us. I see no issue with leveling the playing field, but they won't like it.


Well it looks like this is headed for a showdown.....and we have just the right amount of obstinance in the White House to want to play hard ball with them. Batter up!

Regards, Mike

http://www.agweb.com/article/dairy-producers-at-a-loss-after-grassland-contracts-canceled-naa-ashley-davenport/


----------



## slowzuki (Mar 8, 2011)

We imported 131 million $ of butter last year, I've got to think some of that is from the US.


----------



## carcajou (Jan 28, 2011)

My thoughts are every nation should control their own fresh table milk supply, and other products with a short best before date. As for the rest of the dairy products as long as the standards are similar ship it back and forth as markets dictate. We pay way too much for cheese here, something that could be imported from anywhere.


----------



## IHCman (Aug 27, 2011)

slowzuki said:


> I should add, the reason everyone buys stuff down there is it's cheaper. Everything is just plain more expensive here except trees and hay.


Not far from the border here. We see lots of Canadians that come here to shop as they say things are cheaper here. A lot of people here go up to Canada to buy equipment, furniture, homes, and some prescription medicine as with the exchange rate it works out well for them. Used to go up fishing up north by Flin Flon/Creighton area in the early to mid 2000s. First time up we stopped in Swan River at a bank to exchange money. exchange rate at that time was like .65. Felt like we doubled our money and even though things cost more it was still a very cheap trip.

Met a Canadian rancher from SK at a feedstore here in ND. Was interesting talking to him about what medicines and stuff was cheaper up there and what was cheaper down here. He said a group of ranchers from up there would put in a group buy on pour on, drive down to MT to pick it up, and head back home with a pickup box full as it was lots cheaper down here.


----------

