The President of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association says the beef industry is strong heading into the new year.

Dan Darling says the Canadian industry is admired by other countries in the quality of the animals and products produced in Canada, and is hopeful that new trade deals will continue that momentum.

"At CCA, we like to do everything we can to peak the interest of our young producers because they're the next generation of our industry that we have to look after.

In order for them to come back to the farms and ranches, we have to have a viable industry. I truly believe that we have one and we'll just have to continue to work hard on our trade issues to make sure the prices stay up," he said.

Darling admits there were some challenges this year, especially when it comes to market volatility.

"For any of us that have been in the business for a number of years, we understand that when prices go up they must come down. When they skyrocket like they did, we knew things had to rectify somewhat.

We had no idea that maybe they would come down quite as much as they did. In retrospect, prices maybe went up too high too fast," he said.

Darling says the prices are sitting at the level he believes they should have been a year ago, and hopes things will start to move up in the coming year.

He adds 2016 saw increased access for Canadian beef to a number of markets, including Mexico and China.