Sask. ministers write letter to feds over canola investigation

Sep 11, 2024

China’s apparent retaliation over the federal government’s imposition of tariffs on electric vehicles has raised the ire of Saskatchewan’s Ministers of Trade and Export Development, and Agriculture.

Jeremy Harrison and David Marit have penned a letter to their federal counterparts warning of the impending disaster if China proceeds with an anti-dumping investigation on Canadian canola. The communique from China came just days after the Canadian government imposed 100 per cent tariffs on the goods.

The letter cautioned that Saskatchewan has been impacted by similar moves in the past. In 2018, a Chinese market access ban resulted in marked decreases in exports of canola across the country. From 2018 to 2019, canola seed exports from Saskatchewan to China fell by over $1 billion.

The ministers expanded the impact in the letter. Saskatchewan’s imports to China last year totalled $5.5 billion, with the key three being canola at $2 billion, potash at $908.3 million and peas at $576.2 million.

“We are disappointed that once again Saskatchewan will be negatively impacted by Chinese retaliation,” the letter stated. “We are working closely with industry to understand the full impact of these actions over the coming days.”

The ministers encourage active engagement with Chinese official to resolve the matter as quickly as possible, and they expressed and expectation to be involved in those efforts.

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Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators