Canada's agriculture ministers agreed to the key elements of a new federal, provincial, territorial agricultural policy framework last week when they gathered for their annual meeting in St. John's.

The Canadian Agricultural Partnership, a five-year, three billion dollar investment, will come into effect on 1 April 2018.

Florian Possberg, the Chair of the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board, says this provides a framework under which the federal and provincial governments and industry support many of things that are key for Canada's agricultural industry to operate.

Florian Possberg-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board

The partnership lays out the strategy for funding science, research and innovation for marketing, for our risk management programmes and it provides us with the confidence that these programmes are going to be funded for the next five years.

Through research for example we have Swine Innovation Porc that we know is going to get funded for individual research projects.

In terms of markets and trade, a significant funder of Canada Pork International which supports billions of dollars worth of pork trade and, in terms of risk management, it's the whole AgriStability, AgriInvest, AgriRecovery suite of risk management programmes that really provide us with a safety net in terms of bad things happening in terms of profitability.

So it really is quite important for us to have this laid out for us that we know we can go forward with.

Mr Possberg says knowing this agreement will be in place for next spring provides the stability producers need to move forward with confidence.