China bought twice as much rapeseed in a year as the US Department of Agriculture predicted

China's rapeseed imports in the current agricultural year will amount to 5.1 million tons, according to estimates from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which in January predicted imports of 2.5 million tons, the online publication The Western Producer reported. MarketsFarm analyst Bruce Burnett explains the USDA's miss this way: "On their to-do list, canola shipments are probably in the bottom 10% of the list." He believes the January estimate was just a “placeholder number” that was intended to be revised as new information became available. Burnett credits the rise in Chinese imports in part to a rebound in Canadian production and Australia's record harvest in 2022. The Canadian Grains Commission said the country shipped 4.71 million tonnes of canola to China in the 2022-23 crop year that ended in July. A year earlier, exports amounted to 1.22 million tons. Australia was lowering the price of rapeseed to China after harvesting a record harvest of 8.27 million tonnes in ...