Demand remains high for Canadian soybeans

Glacier FarmMedia – Despite wobbly production, Canadian soybeans continue to ride a wave of promising future demand.

Markets for livestock feed, vegetable oil and human food continue to surge, Soy Canada’s annual meeting heard.

Why it matters: Opportunities for Canadian soybeans are plentiful but export challenges remain.

“We’re seeing incredibly strong demand for what we grow, especially for our food grade soybeans, that’s a good problem to have,” Brian Innes, executive director of Soy Canada, said at the organization’s annual meeting last month in Winnipeg.

“As an industry we are really well-placed here in Canada to be a reliable supplier of sustainable protein, sustainable oil, for humans, for livestock, for biofuel.”

Canada’s soybean production is much different in the East compared to western regions. Eastern farmers get much of the value from their crop from growing non-transgenic varieties that are sold into the human food market, while western Canadian production is dominated by genetically modified varieties aimed at livestock feed and vegetable oil markets, as well as for growing biofuel demand.

The crop’s acreage growth potential is in the West, where millions of acres could come into production if better varieties are developed that can handle volatile prairie growing conditions, ranging from drought to saturation to short seasons to sudden onslaughts of insect pests.

That volatility has seen soybeans slump in acreage as droughts and a late spring make the crop seem disappointing and risky.

However, the strong and growing demands for soybean components suggest that any crop that can be grown will find happy homes.

Food demand is booming, since most North American production zones don’t see much acreage planted to non-transgenic varieties. Ontario growers have taken advantage of that market opportunity.

Short soybean stocks in many places are keeping demand for soybean meal high in North America and overseas.

And the boom in biofuel production and proposed production creates a growing demand for the oil.

Innes said one of soybeans’ advantages is its beneficial environmental impact on farmland. With governments and much of the public concerned about greenhouse gas emissions, soybeans’ impact of reducing fertilizer use and relying upon relatively few inputs makes it a good-looking crop in comparison to other choices.

However, getting the crop to buyers has proven an ongoing vexation. Buyers want it and farmers want to sell it but it can’t get from A to B due to shipping container unavailability. Soybeans rely more than any other crop upon containers to get to market.

That’s part of the reason that the amount of soybeans exported from Canada has stumbled in the last few years. After growing steadily into 2015, tonnes exported have stagnated since.

However, Innes said 2021 saw a record value of Canadian soybeans exported. The demand base is also growing as numerous small markets develop and spread out the concentration from a few major buyers.

“It’s not just about record value last year; it’s about record diversity,” said Innes.

Cracking the container conundrum hasn’t been easy, Innes acknowledged, but said he was hopeful that Ottawa was listening and taking seriously the critical issue.

Soy Canada is supporting Pulse Canada’s efforts to get the container shortage problem tackled.

– This article was originally published at The Western Producer.