News, Culture and NPR for Central & Northern Michigan
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
91.7FM Alpena and WCML-TV Channel 6 Alpena are off the air. Click here to learn more.

Michigan Milk producers are hopeful about new trade deal with Canada and Mexico

stvcr
/
https://flic.kr/p/8UEgA

Negotiations on a new trade deal between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada could be promising for Michigan milk producers.

The Michigan Farm Bureau released a statement this week calling the trade deal welcome news for Michigan agriculture.

John Kran is with the Bureau. He said the deal makes trade freer - which is a good thing.

“In particular with dairy, we’re going to get a 3.6% additional access into their market with this new agreement.”

Kran said the deal would also eliminate some restrictions which allowed Canada to block protein modified milk from being used by Canadian cheese producers.

“Canada created this new class of milk to define this type of product so it made it more difficult to send it there under our trade agreements.”

Michigan sends roughly one billion dollars in agricultural exports to Canada every year.

The NAFTA replacement - dubbed the USMCA -  is expected to be made official in November.