Introduction – Challenges of the Last Two Decades:

• Increasing global economic restructuring and increasing competition from emerging economies (Implications for agriculture, forestry mining and fishing sectors).
• Resource depletion
• Substitution of synthetics for natural commodities,
• Substitution of capital for labour in production (the irony of technological productivity),
• Relocation of natural resource industries to low-cost jurisdictions in the developing world,
• and low real prices on global markets, which (after NAFTA and WTO) are no longer mitigated by subsidies, trade protection and business incentives.