China is out of the canola market.

[Zaphod]

I'm thinking they can crush it for a lot less money than we can. After all, they don't have to worry about environmental, worker safety, labour standards, product quality, etc. I doubt if we could price oil into that market.

[charliep]

You also have to look at China's tariff structure. Favors seed over oil. Canola
oil also has a higher tariff relative to other competing vegetable oils.

[ado089]

Pars, will you stop turning everything into organice vs conventional debate, 99% of it has nothing to do with the issue. I'm glad it works for you, but it's not for everyone. Asking the cutomer what they want works great when you are selling to a customer, but when that customer is a dictatorship of the largest population in the world they don't care if it's grown by kittens under a rainbow.

There is more to this than what we are being told. If you look at the last 6 months China has filled up on cheap oil and then bought Athabasca oilsands and their communist buddies N. Korea bought another upstream oil&gas co in Alberta, they've filled up on copper but I havent's heard about them buying any mines but they probably did. They filled up on beans and corn and are now building a potash mine. What's to say that they don't have enough canola already and now they want the land to grow it themselves. They don't care about blackleg.

[workboots]

couple articles released in the last 15 hours

http://ca.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idCATRE59M3MN20091023

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/reuters/2009/10/23/2009-10-23T043410Z_01_SP192533_RTRIDST_0_CHINA-CANADA-CANOLA.html

[mcfarms]

Just so you kids know, This likely has more to do with nuts and bots or childrens toys than it does Canola.

Blackleg is already present in Chinese canola areas, this is a trade ploy under the guise of a phytosanitary requirement.

[parsley]

Yes, well us "kids" don't get that kind of in-update, wink, wink, from the CWB's Bejing mardarin, only the producers with designer contracts are privy to that kind of revelation.

[cottonpicken]

Is anyone else worried that the whole world seems to be attacking us at once?

[mcfarms]

Oh Pars you know you've got better trade inside info than most of us put together.... I got mine from one of the line companies briefing notes sent out. As well as a little google work. But I stand with my assesment that its an nice non wto way of screwing down the price for a bit? And or raising the domestic price for their growers if they have enough bought to cover the short term. Not COOL if you follow.

[mcfarms]

Cotton
I think it's the favorite way to play the trade barrier game in the world, Non tariff trade barriers.
I happened way back to have the chance to have a soda with the then head negotiator for Canada on trade and he told those of us in attendence that this was the next thing to be watching for as it's incredibly hard to "negotiate" into a trade aggreement. Country of origin labeling, Salmonella in meal etc all part and parcel of the same game. I tell this story lots but then he was dead right then and it's very apparent now. Pars is right the customer is always right but is the customer always telling us the truth?
Question becomes as a nation and industry very dependant on trade how do our commodity groups and gov't tackle this issue? We need to be asking them.

[furrowtickler]

When our "customers" are leagaly robing us blind are they still right pars?