China’s decision to continue to allow Canadian canola restricted access to its markets for another year, and Manitoba weanling pig producers’ ability to continue to find buyers for their pigs, has me thinking of the beaver.
Yes, that noble rodent that is our national image and true representative of our collective soul. Let’s consider the relationship of the beaver to us, for a moment, by listening to this musical appreciation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDs5oTZhncM
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The continuation of this restricted access to China is a victory for Canadian farmers because China is an extremely important market for prairie canola – last year it was the biggest foreign buyer at 2.8 million tonnes. This crop year it has reached 1.62 million tonnes – about a million before the November 15 restrictions went into effect – and the maximum it can reach in a full year of restrictions is estimated by the Canola Council of Canada at 1.4-1.5 million tonnes.
So we’re only getting about half the canola to China that they’d probably buy if these restrictions weren’t in place. But that 1.62 million tonnes is a lot more than the zilch many feared would be the result when China originally announced the clampdown on blackleggy canola. The fact that Canadian exporters, the industry and the federal government found ways to work around the regulations to still make China a major buyer of Canadian canola this year shows that – like the beaver – we can work diligently away, quietly and unheroically, and in the end have a big achievement to splash around in. Through the few ports open to Canadian canola in China, and through sales of canola oil as well as seed, China has remained a huge market for prairie canola growers. Unfortunately, like the mighty exploits of the beaver, achievements like this often happen far from the sight of the farming public, and generally go unrecognized.
So too have the achievements of Manitoba’s weanling exporters gone largely unnoticed. A year ago it seemed as if almost all the weanling industry would collapse as the main market for the piglets – Iowa and southern Minnesota – suddenly became off-limits to almost all sales because of the imposition of Country of Origin Labeling. With few feeder barns in Canada to sell to, farmers were forced to depopulate and – in many cases – leave the business. By late last year it began to look like the Manitoba hog industry after the crisis would look little like the one that went into the crisis, likely becoming a dwarf industry living in the shadows of the impressive past.
But Manitoba hog producers and their organizations worked hard to find ways to keep making sales to U.S. hog producers, an effort which was helped greatly by Tyson Foods decision to keep buying U.S.-fed pigs that had been born in Canada. As Manitoba producers beavered away, working long and hard with American buyers, they found enough buyers to keep about two-thirds of the business going, dropping from an average pace of about four-and-a-half million weanlings a year to probably about three million presently. That two-thirds is a lot more than most were predicting, leaving a bigger industry than many had feared would be left, and now they’re bringing in good money as the market rebounds and Americans flock back to the table.
Manitoba producers could have given up and fallen back into the small domestic market and accepted life as a stagnant industry, but they didn’t, and because of that Manitoba still has a major hog export industry buying up feedgrains from grain farmers, providing manure that replaces fossil-fuel based fertilizers, providing thousands of jobs across the province – and being generally ignored by the Manitoba and Canadian public. Because – once more – quiet, hard, diligent, unstopping work by beaverlike Canadians doesn’t make headlines even in Canada.
No one lives in fear of the beaver – unlike the Russian bear, for instance – and the beaver really isn’t that visually impressive – unlike the American eagle, for instance – but in its quiet and unassuming way, the Canadian beaver is the most impressive of all of God’s creatures. So I’m glad our farmers and industry organizations are acting like beavers. No matter how many times our markets get broken, they’ll busy themselves rebuilding them.
