Written By: Bob McIntyre
The Chinese embargo on Canadian canola isn’t having a major effect on Timmins farmer Frank Haasen, but he is feeling the trickle-down effect of supply and demand.
Canola only accounts for about ten percent of his mostly dairy operation. He says most of the canola he sells stays in Ontario. However, because the largest customer for the Canadian product isn’t buying it, the price is dropping. Haasen found that out when he recently sold a load.
“It’s 40-plus tons of canola. And the price we got this year is about $80 a ton less than we got last year,” he tells My Timmins Now Dot Com. “That price is lower, mostly because the Chinese are basically out of the game right now.”
Haasen think that farmers in the Earlton-New Liskeard area grow a lot more canola than he does. It’s the yellow flowers you see in the fields in that area in late July.
Haasen isn’t likely to take advantage of this week’s announced program of loans from the federal government, to help canola producers.
“Because we’re not big canola growers, it’s not going to mean a whole lot to us. But somebody that grows 15,000 acres of canola – you know, where we grow a couple hundred acres, there are farms in Western Canada where they grow 15,000 acres or 20,000 acres of canola — this program’s going to be huge to them. It’s going to inject the cash they need into their business to carry things over.”
