With what is now a total ban on Canadian canola heading to China, local farmers are very concerned about growing the crop this year.

Vulcan County Ag Fieldman, and area farmer, Kelly Malmberg says this is not good news.

"Well we heard the news a while back that they'd started with Richardson-Pioneer and now they've moved pretty much to everybody. And I see the markets this morning and our canola kind of crawled back, it was looking like about ten and a half to eleven bucks a bushel, but it's nose diving now. I think it's down about 20 cents a bushel already today."

Malmberg, says the Chinese knew exactly where to hurt Canada the most in their escalating trade war.

"Pretty volatile industry. We're the victims of this and it's over a political issue with that person from that electronic company and I'm assuming that's 99 per cent of why this is happening. The sad thing is farmers are going to take the brunt of this little political charade."

Malmberg says he's already seen canola prices starting to drop, and unless something is done, he's not sure how far it'll go.

He says canola is a high risk, high reward crop, that's very expensive to grow, but usually yields a very good price.

He says China buys about 40 per cent of Canada's canola exports.

 

Send us your news tips, story ideas and comments at news@highriveronline.com