Has RR canola been good or bad

[wd9]

Looks like we're back to our regularily scheduled programming. Crop production.

[ianben]

I have been at a canola meeting today.

Comment on bio fuel here in UK was oil companies have bought out the mandatory inclusion rate.Green fuelis just vote caching retoric.

Not so in rest of Europe. Spain has plans for plants with very little of own production

However low temp palm oil blend and mild winter will see less canola oil used this winter.

Holl varieties for food industry was seen as huge new market.poss 20% of current acreage

Comments on this were lack of under standing by buyers on the difficulties and time scale needed to produce this product.

McD etc used to just in time buying at knock down price but premiums and forward contracts will be needed for this oil to be produced in any quantity

Land with no volenteer canola needed. 5yr break or never grown canola.

Such land will be rare so what will this premiun be worth?

Trans fat rules mean no oil no McD!

[wd9]

I agree ianbem, the McD's Shmucker's A&W's and others of the world for too long have not forward contracted oil. As they have made the committment to a healthy pathway (low in trans and sats) they are realizing they can't just expect the stock to be there. HOLL's even more so.

This means I think much more contracting in the future, although with contracting comes expectation of production. Higher price will dictate higher risk in terms of JIT farm production - as long as the money is there in the end I guess.

Is this discussion happening in the UK also?

[kamichel]

I don't think the gmo issue has hurt us any here in Canada. We never really exported much canola into Europe in the past but the last few years that has been changing, the European biofuel industry would like to get a hold of a large chunk of our canola. Heard plenty of scare tactics from environmentalists at one time but less now. The GMO canola has allowed us to grow canola at a less cost. Hopefully the GMO picture will change in the future to more nutrition and marketting benefits. Spraying out the RR volunteers is a real pain to do and costly, but one benefit to the Express pack is that it does provide noticable residual weed controle, less weed competition in early crop establishment.