The Canola Council of Canada is hopeful China will increase the number of crushers allowed to handle Canadian product, which would boost seed sales to that important destination.
Sales to Canada’s top customer fell by 22 percent in 2009-10 because of Chinese import restrictions.
China is concerned about the potential spread of blackleg disease, and shipments found to contain the disease, which is prevalent in Western Canada, can be processed by only four plants at ports on China’s coast, far from its rapeseed growing area.
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Total crush capacity for the four approved Chinese plants is 2.1 million tonnes a year.
Rumours are circulating that additional crushing plants have applied to China’s government to get on the approved list, which would create more opportunity for Canadian canola seed to move to China.
“Our intelligence is not that great that we know how many might have applied, but we understand that some have,” said JoAnne Buth, president of the Canola Council of Canada.
“It’s been a while since we’ve had any approved.”
Buth doesn’t know how long it will take for the plants to be approved because it has been variable in the past. The first two approvals were quick but the fourth took longer.
She said additional approvals would be only a short-term benefit because they would apply only to the 2010 crop.
Buth said China was the top buyer of Canadian canola and its byproducts in 2010. Seed sales have fallen, but oil and meal sales have increased.
Canola oil sales rose 64 percent in 2009-10 and are up 171 percent for the first four months of 2010-11 compared to the same time last year.
However, Buth said it is important to retain the seed portion of that market because there aren’t enough Canadian crushers to supply China’s oil needs.
That’s why Canada continues to work on a permanent resolution to the blackleg issue.
Buth believes the solution lies in the co-operative research taking place between the two countries, which are attempting to scientifically determine how much of a blackleg risk Canadian seed destined for processing poses to the Chinese rapeseed industry.
“We’re really quite in the preliminary stages on the science side of things,” she said.
“It’s too early to tell what the solution might be.”
One example of a technical solution to a trade impasse is the proposal developed by the European Commission to reduce tolerance levels on unapproved genetically modified traits in imported feed shipments to 0.1 percent from 0.01 percent.
Buth said canola growers are likely to face more of these non-tariff trade issues in the future. She encouraged them to use best management practices on their farms to manage diseases such as blackleg.
