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CONCLUDING COMMENTS
The Report Card on Agriculture under NAFTA was designed to
address the important issue of What Have We Learnedfrom the Experiences of
NAFTA ? Specific questions focused on both the general agriculture sector and
commodity-specific sub-sectors, as well as a series of issues including fair com-
petition, trade-distorting subsidies, market-access opportunities, dispute reso-
lution, and extension of NAFTA to the Western hemisphere.
Workshop participants were asked to complete the report card both
during the opening session of the workshop and again following the closing
session of the workshop. The purpose of double-report-card format was to
determine if learning had occurred during the workshop or if opinions had
changed in response to potentially new information. Comparing the report
card results provides evidence that “learning” did occur during the workshop.
Workshop participants were from Canada, the United States, and
Mexico, representing universities, government agencies, and production agri-
culture. Since participation was dominated by the United States (49 percent)
and Canada (41 percent), the results of the report cards are not intended to be a
statistically representative sample. Rather, the report cards are intended sim-
ply to reveal the opinions of an interested and reasonably-well-informed set of
workshop participants concerning what we have learned from the NAFTA ex-
perience.
As suggested in the introduction, the report card results tend to be both
interesting and informative. On some issues, considerable agreement exists
among workshop participants from the three NAFTA countries. On other is-
sues, particularly commodity-specific issues, there are varying degrees of dis-
agreement among workshop participants, often reflecting relative positions of
competitive advantage and disadvantage. Based on the report card, it appears
that NAFTA is receiving a passing grade on agriculture and that the progress
report is positive to date and optimistic with respect to the future.