canola

Canola

The announcement Canada and Japan have begun negotiations on a free trade agreement is welcomed news for Canada's Canola Growers. Rick White is the Executive Director Of The Canadian Canola Growers Association.

He told us the Japanese markets is very important, and believes a deal would provide more stable and expanded market access, “Very reliable market and typically they take anywhere from 2.1 to 2.2 million tons of seed canola every year it's very stable. We think we can grow that and this agreement will hopefully allow us to expand into that market even more. We'd like to start shipping more of our value added product like canola oil as well as apposed to just seed.”

White adds the Japanese market is a very lucrative one for canola growers,“The market potential there is quite substantial, I can't put a number on it but I think you can have quite a substantial increase because we are a very reliable supplier. We will be producing about 15 million tons in Canada and the Japanese market representing over 2 million tons of that we can handle alot more of their business.”

Japan is the world's third largest economy and vegetable oils are a mainstay of the Japanese diet, with canola oil being the number one vegetable oil consumed in the country.