Canola Crush Down in May; Still Ahead of a Year Ago

Jun 26, 2024

The Canadian canola crush declined for the second straight month in May but was still up sharply from a year earlier.

A Statistics Canada crush report on Wednesday showed a total of 920,432 tonnes of canola were crushed last month. That is down 3.8% from the April crush of 957,639 but a hefty 19.5% above the 769,942 tonnes crushed in May 2023.

The cumulative August-May crush now stands at 9.25 million tonnes, 968,636 or 11.6% ahead of the same period a year earlier. With just two months now left in the 2023-24 marketing year, the crush at the end of May stood at 86.4% of Agriculture Canada’s full year forecast of a new record high of 10.7 million tonnes.

Ag Canada raised its 2023-24 crush estimate to 10.7 million tonnes in May, up 200,000 from the April projection, amid a 1-million tonne reduction in the export forecast to 6 million due to weak global demand. However, crush demand remains hot as the sector expands to serve U.S. and Canadian demand for renewable energy. Ag Canada made no changes to its 2023-24 canola supply-demand estimates this month.

Canola crush capacity in Canada alone is set to grow from the current 11.2 million tonnes annually to just over 17 million over the next five years.

According to StatsCan, the May crush yielded 393,501 tonnes of canola oil, down from 412,867 in April but up from 323,217 in May 2023.

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Video: From Conventional to Regenerative: Will Groeneveld’s Journey Back to the Land

"You realize you've got a pretty finite number of years to do this. If you ever want to try something new, you better do it."

That mindset helped Will Groeneveld take a bold turn on his Alberta grain farm. A lifelong farmer, Will had never heard of regenerative agriculture until 2018, when he attended a seminar by Kevin Elmy that shifted his worldview. What began as curiosity quickly turned into a deep exploration of how biology—not just chemistry—shapes the health of our soils, crops and ecosystems.

In this video, Will candidly reflects on his family’s farming history, how the operation evolved from a traditional mixed farm to grain-only, and how the desire to improve the land pushed him to invite livestock back into the rotation—without owning a single cow.

Today, through creative partnerships and a commitment to the five principles of regenerative agriculture, Will is reintroducing diversity, building soil health and extending living roots in the ground for as much of the year as possible. Whether it’s through intercropping, zero tillage (which he’s practiced since the 1980s) or managing forage for visiting cattle, Will’s approach is a testament to continuous learning and a willingness to challenge old norms.

Will is a participant in the Regenerative Agriculture Lab (RAL), a social innovation process bringing together producers, researchers, retailers and others to co-create a resilient regenerative agriculture system in Alberta. His story highlights both the potential and humility required to farm with nature, not against it.