Drought in Canada forces canola importers to look for other options

By Rod Nickel WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) – Canada's smallest canola crop in 13 years, resulting from a severe drought, is forcing importers like Japan and Mexico to pay more or look elsewhere for the yellow-flowered oilseed. With scarce Canadian rapeseed resulting in high prices, customers of the largest oilseed exporter are relying more heavily on smaller producing countries or on alternative products such as palm oil and soy, driving up global food inflation. Lack of workers and pests are also affecting the supply of vegetable oil. Canadian export markets and processors, which crush rapeseed to produce oil for food or fuel, and bran for animal feed, are facing far below normal supplies. Canada exported 388,000 tonnes of rapeseed from Aug. 1 through the first seven weeks of the new crop year, down 71% year-on-year, according to the Canadian Grain Commission. With little to sell, exporters are mostly executing the sales they made before ...