This canaryseed imbroglio has me madder than a hatter with twice the blood-mercury level.
Mexico is blocking canaryseed imports from Canada over apparent concerns about noxious weed seeds. Apparently the concern is that some Canadian canaryseed seeds got planted and up bloomed some nasty weeds. I’ve heard wild buckwheat named as a particularly unwanted weedy evildoer.
Apparently since the Canadian Food Inspection Agency can’t guarantee Canadian canaryseed shipments are 100 percent free of weed seeds, commercial canaryseed intercourse between our great nations must come to an end. Apparently. I’m saying “apparently” a lot because everything I’m getting is conjecture, because CFIA people are slow to get back to me with an update on the situation and everyone else out there is just repeating what they’re hearing from somebody or other out there. There have been a number of CFIA-industry and industry-industry conference calls this week about the matter and exporters are trying to figure out what it means for future sales, for stuff already in transit, and for anything rejected. Farmers are probably thinking about the impact on prices, which isn’t good.
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I also used the word “apparent” above because Mexico’s concern and reaction – zero tolerance – is redolent of the reek that has attended China’s sudden extreme aversion to blackleg in Canadian canola imports.
Unfortunately for canaryseed growers, Mexico’s a lot more important to that market than China is to canola. Mexico’s a longstanding, good-paying canaryseed market. China’s a sometimes-in, sometimes-out canola market. Mexico has taken about 24 percent of the Canadian canaryseed shipped so far this crop year, took 30 percent last year by this time, and on average takes 26 percent of the exported crop. That’s a dominant, consistent buyer.
This is the problem with small, high value markets: when something blocks access to them, the market can crash. Luckily, this isn’t happening with canaryseed prices, I hear. Canadian prices settled back a bit and Mexican domestic prices rose a bit, but there’s no crash up here apparently. (There’s that word again!) The canaryseed market should be bullish, with acreage in severe doubt because of the saturation of the prairies, but instead has flattened because of this Mexican standoff.
These wrinkles with ag exports to dominant buyers wreak havoc on producers and often inspire calls for farmers to turn their backs on the world and just produce for the domestic market. This is, of course, impossible to do for most of what we produce, because very few people live in Canada. You could jerry-rig a supply management system for canaryseed, but that would enough of a market to employ about three guys. Maybe.
Like it or not, prairie farmers are often stuck relying on a few small and fussy markets that can go SPLAT! at any moment, as in this case. And it seems crazy to invest so much – as farmers do – and work so hard producing crops and livestock for buyers who can so precipitously disappear. But  you know what, that’s always been the case with Canada.
And that’s what had me thinking of hatters, both those mad and those not.
Look at this:
This kind of hat – made from felted beaver fur – was the reason both English and French traders, laborers and soldiers made the arduous journey to this unforgiving land and set up outfits like the Hudson’s Bay Company. A fashion hunger for beaver felt hats took a hold of  European men in the 17th century and the fever didn’t break for a couple of centuries.
When you think about it, that’s an odd and quirky market to build a nation out of: beaver fur for felt hats. But it’s a small, specialized, high value market that – served by tough-as-nails traders, voyageurs, Orkneymen and aboriginals – gave a basis for what we now call Canada, even if it didn’t give those involved in the trade an easy life.
So, in that way, canaryseed growers are following a proud Canadian tradition of living by the whims of flippant markets and somehow managing to eke a living out of it.
