North Dakota farmers have torn a page from what was once a Cinderella story in Western Canada.
Growers in the northern American state are embracing canola as a profitable crop that can help break disease cycles in small-grain rotations.
North Dakota growers this year planted an estimated 1.2 million acres of canola and some industry sources suggest there is room to triple that production.
“I would think we could easily accommodate three million acres,” said Barry Coleman, executive director of the Northern Canola Growers Association, based in Bismarck, N.D.
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“I would say it ranks right up there among the top as far as growth potential.”
A decade ago, North Dakota farmers planted only 15,000 acres of canola. This year, the crop appeared in almost every county.
North Dakota farmers leads the way in canola production in the United States, followed by Minnesota. There are at least eight American states now growing the crop.
“It’s been what’s paying the bills in northwestern Minnesota,” said Beth Nelson of the Minnesota Canola Council.
“It’s not highly profitable, but better than some of the other crops that were grown in the area.”
Minnesota farmers grew 200,000 acres of canola this year, not enough to place it among the top five crops grown in the state. But Nelson thinks canola could eventually cover 800,000 acres in Minnesota.
Total U.S. harvested canola acreage is expected to be 1.459 million acres this year, up from 1.044 million last year, 1.09 million in 1998 and 698,000 in 1997.
Dale Adolphe, Canola Council of Canada president, said the expanding U.S. crop is a concern to Canadian canola growers. The U.S. represents a large market for their crop.
“We don’t want to lose that market to U.S. production. However, generally speaking, growers also recognize that we are really working in a North American market – not a Canadian market and a U.S. market.”
To illustrate that point, Adolphe notes that the Canadian crushing industry is largely owned by Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland and Central Soya, which are all U.S. firms.
“They are not as loyal to the origin as what Canadian-owned companies might be. They are concerned about quantity, quality and price.”
Last year, some canola growers in Manitoba went public with concerns about the volume of American canola being crushed at the CanAmera Foods plant in Altona, Man.
However, when the volumes of oil, meal and raw canola are tallied up, Canada exports far more to the U.S. than it imports, said Ernie Sirski, president of the Manitoba Canola Growers Association.
“We’re still the net winners by a lot.”
Citing numbers from memory, Sirski said 100,000 to 150,000 tonnes of raw canola were imported last year into Canada from the U.S.
Meanwhile, 200,000 to 250,000 tonnes of raw canola went south. That was accompanied by 500,000 tonnes of oil and a million tonnes of meal, Sirski said.
“They (the Americans) can’t grow enough for their own needs. Their demand has surpassed that.”
The canola associations in Manitoba and North Dakota view their efforts as complementary to one another.
The groups are working to expand markets while promoting the health benefits of canola based products.
