Tomorrow I’m heading off to the Canola Council of Canada convention in San Francisco.
And I can already hear some of you saying: “San Francisco? What the heck is the CCC doing in San Francisco? What does that have to do with canola?”
There are two answers for that: 1) Whenever the CCC puts its convention in an exciting place more people show up. And that includes farmers. When the CCC had its convention in New York City it got its highest attendance of farmers ever to that point. The reason: farmer’s spouses were keen to make it a family holiday since it was the one time they could justify going to NYC. If they put the convention in Yorkton, in the middle of farm country, you’d probably get a lot fewer farmers; 2) California is the highest-paying and best export customer of Canadian canola meal. The Cal dairy industry uses lots of canola meal, which is ideally suited for the dairy cow diet.
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Being in California allows the industry – including farmers – to hear from customers. The convention includes a session on the dairy industry in the state and is followed by a panel of dairy farmers and industry people talking about why they buy canola meal. It’s an especially relevant topic this year – and there is no way the canola council knew this was going to be the case more than a year ago when they picked San Fran as the next location for the convention – because of the border problems canola meal is having getting into the United States due to oddly stringent controls on salmonella being placed on imports of meal.
There are also lots of other industry issues that’ll be discussed. I called up canola industry analyst Greg Kostal to ask him what he would be interested in at the convention, and he said: 1) China and blackleg; 2) China and blackleg; 3) China and blackleg; 4) the salmonella situation; 5) the true yield potential of all the new varieties that have been coming to market that raise the question of whether the yield increase trendline is getting slopier.
And of course, canola’s reputation in its biggest export market will also be discussed.
I’ll be covering all of it and plan to do frequent blog updates so you’re all plugged in to what’s going on. You may not be walking around in a Tee-shirt and breathing in the salty air of the bay in the shadow of the Golden Gate bridge, but you’ll get a sense of what’s going on with our pretty golden crop. Next post will be from California. Or from the Vancouver airport tomorrow, where I get to spend four quality hours waiting for a connection.
