While wheat growers south of the border spend millions of dollars in legal fees trying to block imports of Canadian wheat, their canola-growing counterparts are rolling out the welcome mat for Canadian crop.
In the year ending March 31, Canada shipped 175,000 tonnes of canola seed and 420,000 tonnes of canola oil to the United States.
And that’s just fine with U.S. producers
“It’s not an issue for our growers,” said Barry Coleman, executive director of the Northern Canola Growers Association, a Bismarck, North Dakota, based organization representing farmers and other canola industry stakeholders.
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“There isn’t any animosity on the part of our growers over Canadian product coming this way because we can’t supply the U.S. market anyway.”
According to U.S. statistics, the Americans actually shipped more seed to Canada, with roughly 250,000 tonnes going north to Canadian crushing plants in the 2002-03 marketing year.
Coleman said getting more product out to consumers is crucial to the future growth and viability of the U.S. industry, and it doesn’t matter where that product comes from.
Canola accounts for only about seven percent of the giant U.S. vegetable oil market.
“We want to see that increased and obviously everything can’t be labelled ‘Made in the U.S.A,’ ” he said. “Buyers here don’t care whether it’s Canadian or American canola.”
Some Canadian farm groups that oppose the Canadian Wheat Boards say that non-board crops like canola trade freely across the U.S. border because those crops are not sold through a single desk seller in Canada.
But Coleman said even if canola was marketed by a single desk agency like the CWB, growers in the U.S. wouldn’t try to block imports.
“I don’t think that would happen at this point,” he said.
The big difference is that U.S. wheat growers grow enough volume to fill domestic demand and so don’t like imports taking away that business. That’s not the case with canola.
There could be a need for even more Canadian imports in the coming year, with U.S. acreage expected to decline by about 14 percent in 2003, due to high production costs and low returns relative to competing crops like flaxseed and barley.
The U.S. department of agriculture has projected plantings of 1.25 million acres, compared with 1.46 million tonnes in 2002 and 1.49 million in 2001. Almost all of that is planted in North Dakota.
Coleman added the U.S. growers have a close relationship with Canadian canola organizations and will continue to work together to promote the consumption of canola oil in the U.S.
