There is a growing world demand for mustard, dealers told growers at Crop Production Week in Saskatoon last week.
But farmers shouldn’t assume that means higher prices for the crop.
“We can’t go hog wild here,” said Dave Peal of Winnipeg mustard dealer Man Can Ingredients. “There are people out there to tame us.”
Peal thinks the United States market will keep demanding high quality mustard for condiment and meat processing. The Asian market could also be good as fast food increases in popularity there.
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Many meat products contain mustard flour as filler, but few people realize it’s an ingredient because the flavor is removed, Peal said.
Walter Dyck, of Demeter Agro in Lethbridge, Alta., told members of the Saskatchewan Mustard Growers Association the consistent high quality of Canadian mustard will continue to dominate international markets.
“The world is looking to Canada for its mustard requirements.”
But Peal said growers shouldn’t assume demand equals higher prices.
Canada might dominate world mustard trade, but almost any country at Canada’s latitude can grow mustard. When prices peak, growers overseas see a lucrative opportunity to cash in.
This year, mustard prices tumbled as eastern European growers dropped large amounts on the world market. Peal said these growers were reacting to the high prices that mustard enjoyed for the two years before, when it was selling for 30 to 50 cents per pound.
“They took some good markets away from us,” he said.
Mustard prices tend to be volatile. When too little is produced, prices jump because processors will pay what they must to get an essential ingredient. Canada, the world mustard giant, grows only 700,000 acres. A few hundred growers avoiding the crop can lead to a substantial shortfall.
When growers in other countries jump into the market because of high prices, even modest acreage increases can swell the world crop, causing surpluses that drive prices down.
However, Peal said the outlook is for stable prices over the next five to 10 years, as the peaks and depressions in mustard – as in most commodities – flatten out.
That means mustard growers shouldn’t have problems selling their crop.
“As long as we keep our prices relatively stable, we have a good market.”
Dyck said buyers’ main quality concerns are about black seeds polluting yellow mustard. These can be from canola or weeds like buckwheat.
Black seeds ruin the appearance of condiment mustard and lower its value, Dyck said. Even a little black seed contamination will hammer a load’s grade from No. 1 to No. 4.
Quality concerns are likely to increase as processors demand better ingredients from growers, he said.
Some farmers wondered whether there would soon be a herbicide-resistant canola that would allow them to kill the weeds causing the black seed problem. But Dyck said world markets don’t want a herbicide-tolerant mustard. French consumers, in particular, are opposed to genetically modified crops. France is a major buyer of Canadian mustard.
Dyck also said the big seed companies are unlikely to invest the money they have put in canola research because mustard covers only hundreds of thousands of acres, not millions.
