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    What a Prolonged Rail Shutdown in Canada Would Mean for Trade

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    Rail labor disruptions in Canada tend to be brief, but a prolonged stoppage could have hurt farmers, automakers and other businesses.Late Thursday, the Canadian government ordered arbitration between the railroads and the rail workers’ union, a move that will end the shutdown. Read the latest coverage here.Canada’s two main railroads shut down for several hours on Thursday after contract talks with a labor union failed to reach a deal, forcing businesses in North America to grapple with another big supply chain challenge after several years of disruptions.The sprawling networks of Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Kansas City are crucial to Canada’s economy and an important conduit for exports to the United States, Mexico and other countries. Had it lasted, the stoppage would have forced companies to find other modes of transport, but for some types of cargo, like grains, there are no practical alternatives to railroads.Canadian National’s network extends into the United States, and Canadian Pacific Kansas City has operations in the United States and Mexico. The companies’ networks outside Canada are still operating because their American and Mexican workers are covered by different labor agreements.What would a shutdown mean?Canada has recent experience with rail labor disruptions. Strikes in 2015 and 2019 ended in days. The country’s federal government has the power to press the rail workers union, the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, and management to accept an arbitrated settlement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Will Billions More in New Aid Save Family Farms?

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    Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has a line about the state of small-scale agriculture in America these days.It’s drawn from the National Agricultural Statistics Service, which shows that as the average size of farms has risen, the nation had lost 544,000 of them since 1981. “That’s every farm today that exists in North Dakota and South Dakota, added to those in Wisconsin and Minnesota, added to those in Nebraska and Colorado, added to those in Oklahoma and Missouri,” Mr. Vilsack told a conference in Washington this spring. “Are we as a country OK with it?”Even though the United States continues to produce more food on fewer acres, Mr. Vilsack worries that the loss of small farmers has weakened rural economies, and he wants to stop the bleeding. Unlike his last turn in the same job, under former President Barack Obama, this time his department is able to spend billions of dollars in subsidies and incentives passed under three major laws since 2021 — including the biggest investment in conservation programs in U.S. history.The plan in a nutshell: Multiply and improve revenue streams to bolster farm balance sheets. Rather than just selling crops and livestock, farms of the future could also sell carbon credits, waste products and renewable energy.“Instead of the farm getting one check, they potentially could get four checks,” Mr. Vilsack said in an interview. He is also helping schools, hospitals and other institutions to buy food grown locally, and investors to build meatpacking plants and other processing facilities to free farmers from powerful middlemen.American Farms Are DisappearingAs agriculture consolidates, fewer operations grow more crops.

    Source: U.S. Department of AgricultureBy The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    A Bill to Limit Canada’s Trade Negotiators on Farm Goods Edges Nearer to Law

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    The measure from a member of the Bloc Québécois would ban changes to the supply management system for dairy, poultry and eggs.Private members’ bills, particularly those from members of the Bloc Québécois, rarely make their way through the parliamentary process. But after passing the House of Commons with strong support from members of all parties, a bill from Yves Perron, who speaks for the Bloc on farming, handily passed a second vote in the unelected Senate on Tuesday.Supply management brings stability, but at a price.Ian Austen/The New York TimesAnd perhaps even more surprising, it deals with a contentious issue: Canada’s supply management system, which controls production and sets minimum prices for dairy and poultry products as well as eggs.Many free-market economists and politicians cast supply management as a legalized price cartel that increases Canadians’ grocery bills. And in negotiations for every one of Canada’s major trade agreements in recent decades, the supply management system has emerged as one of the final sticking points.[Read from 2016: Safe for Now, Canadian Dairy Farmers Fret Over E.U. Trade Deal]If Mr. Perron’s bill makes it past the few remaining legislative hurdles and becomes law, it will bar Canada’s trade negotiators from offering any changes to supply management during future trade talks.Under the system, to avoid price-killing oversupply, farmers are assigned a production quota — effectively a license to produce milk, chicken, turkey or eggs — that they cannot exceed. Until recently, imports were effectively banned through eye-wateringly high import duties.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    As Wildfires Grow Fiercer, Some Companies Look to Rebuild the Tree Supply Chain

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    As forests succumb to ever-fiercer wildfires, the federal government and some adventurous private companies are trying to resuscitate an industry.When it came to wildfires, 2021 was an increasingly common kind of year in Montana: Flames consumed 747,000 acres, an area nearly the size of Long Island.About 2,700 of those acres were on Don Harland’s Sheep Creek Ranch, where ever-drier summers have turned lodgepole pines into matchsticks ready to ignite. After the smoke cleared, Mr. Harland found creeks running black with soot and the ground hardening more with every day that passed.A former timber industry executive, Mr. Harland knew the forest wouldn’t grow back on its own. The land is high and dry, the ground rocky and inhospitable — not like the rainy coastal Northwest, where trees grow thick and fast. Nor did he have the money to carry out a replanting operation, since growing for timber wouldn’t pay for itself; most of the nearby sawmills had shut down long ago anyway. The state government offered a few grants, but nothing on the scale needed to heal the scar.Then a local forester Mr. Harland knew suggested he get in touch with a new company out of Seattle, called Mast. After visiting to scope out the site, Mast’s staff proposed to replant the whole acreage, free, and even pay Mr. Harland a bit at the end. Mast, in turn, was to earn money from companies that wanted to offset their carbon emissions and would put millions of dollars into planting trees that otherwise wouldn’t exist.Mr. Harland said he had his doubts about the carbon-selling part of the plan, but he was impressed with Mast’s operations, so he said yes.Two years later, after seeds had been collected from similar trees on nearby lands, crews of planters came out with bags full of seedlings, rapidly plunking them into the ashen ground. As part of the deal, Mr. Harland signed an agreement to let the trees grow for at least 100 years, so they can keep sucking greenhouse gases out of the air as they mature.Can carbon credits help rebuild a forest? Tell us what you think. More

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    They Grow Your Berries and Peaches, but Often Lack One Item: Insurance

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    Farmers of fruits and vegetables say coverage has become unavailable or unaffordable as drought and floods increasingly threaten their crops.Farmers who grow fresh fruits and vegetables are often finding crop insurance prohibitively expensive — or even unavailable — as climate change escalates the likelihood of drought and floods capable of decimating harvests.Their predicament has left some small farmers questioning their future on the land.Efforts to increase the availability and affordability of crop insurance are being considered in Congress as part of the next farm bill, but divisions between the interests of big and small farmers loom over the debate.The threat to farms from climate change is not hypothetical. A 2021 study from researchers at Stanford University found that rising temperatures were responsible for 19 percent of the $27 billion in crop insurance payouts from 1991 to 2017 and concluded that additional warming substantially increases the likelihood of future crop losses.About 85 percent of the nation’s commodity crops — which include row crops like corn, soybeans and wheat — are insured, according to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, a nonprofit promoting environmentally friendly food production.In contrast, barely half the land devoted to specialty crops — supermarket staples like strawberries, apples, asparagus and peaches — was insured in 2022, federal statistics show.Among those going without insurance is Bernie Smiarowski, who farms potatoes on 700 acres in western Massachusetts, along with 12 acres for strawberries. His soil is considered some of the nation’s most fertile. The trade-off is the proximity to the Connecticut River, a bargain that grows more tenuous as a warming world heightens the likelihood of flooding.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Can Europe Save Forests Without Killing Jobs in Malaysia?

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    The European Union’s upcoming ban on imports linked to deforestation has been hailed as a “gold standard” in climate policy: a meaningful step to protect the world’s forests, which help remove planet-killing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.The law requires traders to trace the origins of a head-spinning variety of products — beef and books, chocolate and charcoal, lipstick and leather. To the European Union, the mandate, set to take effect next year, is a testament to the bloc’s role as a global leader on climate change.The policy, though, has gotten caught in fierce crosscurrents about how to navigate the economic and political trade-offs demanded by climate change in a world where power is shifting and international institutions are fracturing.Developing countries have expressed outrage — with Malaysia and Indonesia among the most vocal. Together, the two nations supply 85 percent of the world’s palm oil, one of seven critical commodities covered by the European Union’s ban. And they maintain that the law puts their economies at risk.In their eyes, rich, technologically advanced countries — and former colonial powers — are yet again dictating terms and changing the rules of trade when it suits them. “Regulatory imperialism,” Indonesia’s economic minister declared.The view fits with complaints from developing countries that the reigning international order neglects their concerns.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Nature Has Value. Could We Literally Invest in It?

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    “Natural asset companies” would put a market price on improving ecosystems, rather than on destroying them.Picture this: You own a few hundred acres near a growing town that your family has been farming for generations. Turning a profit has gotten harder, and none of your children want to take it over. You don’t want to sell the land; you love the open space, the flora and fauna it hosts. But offers from developers who would turn it into subdivisions or strip malls seem increasingly tempting.One day, a land broker mentions an idea. How about granting a long-term lease to a company that values your property for the same reasons you do: long walks through tall grass, the calls of migrating birds, the way it keeps the air and water clean.It sounds like a scam. Or charity. In fact, it’s an approach backed by hardheaded investors who think nature has an intrinsic value that can provide them with a return down the road — and in the meantime, they would be happy to hold shares of the new company on their balance sheets.Such a company doesn’t yet exist. But the idea has gained traction among environmentalists, money managers and philanthropists who believe that nature won’t be adequately protected unless it is assigned a value in the market — whether or not that asset generates dividends through a monetizable use.The concept almost hit the big time when the Securities and Exchange Commission was considering a proposal from the New York Stock Exchange to list these “natural asset companies” for public trading. But after a wave of fierce opposition from right-wing groups and Republican politicians, and even conservationists wary of Wall Street, in mid-January the exchange pulled the plug.That doesn’t mean natural asset companies are going away; their proponents are working on prototypes in the private markets to build out the model. And even if this concept doesn’t take off, it’s part of a larger movement motivated by the belief that if natural riches are to be preserved, they must have a price.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump’s Tariffs Hurt U.S. Jobs but Swayed American Voters, Study Says

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    New research finds that former President Donald J. Trump’s tariffs did not bring back U.S. jobs, but voters appeared to reward him for the levies anyway.The sweeping tariffs that former President Donald J. Trump imposed on China and other American trading partners were simultaneously a political success and an economic failure, a new study suggests. That’s because the levies won over voters for the Republican Party even though they did not bring back jobs.The nonpartisan working paper examines monthly data on U.S. employment by industry to find that the tariffs that Mr. Trump placed on foreign metals, washing machines and an array of goods from China starting in 2018 neither raised nor lowered the overall number of jobs in the affected industries.But the tariffs did incite other countries to impose their own retaliatory tariffs on American products, making them more expensive to sell overseas, and those levies had a negative effect on American jobs, the paper finds. That was particularly true in agriculture: Farmers who exported soybeans, cotton and sorghum to China were hit by Beijing’s decision to raise tariffs on those products to as much as 25 percent.The Trump administration aimed to offset those losses by offering financial support for farmers, ultimately giving out $23 billion in 2018 and 2019. But those funds were distributed unevenly, a government assessment found, and the economists say those subsidies only partially mitigated the harm that had been caused by the tariffs.The findings contradict Mr. Trump’s claims that his tariffs helped to reverse some of the damage done by competition from China and bring back American manufacturing jobs that had gone overseas. The economists conclude that the aggregate effect on U.S. jobs of the three measures — the original tariffs, retaliatory tariffs and subsidies granted to farmers — were “at best a wash, and it may have been mildly negative.”“Certainly you can reject the hypothesis that this tariff policy was very successful at bringing back jobs to those industries that got a lot of exposure to that tariff war,” one of the study authors, David Dorn of the University of Zurich, said in an interview.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More