Alberta farmers caught in the middle of Canada, China dispute

A field of canola is seen in southern Alberta in this undated image. (CTV News)

Alberta farmers appear to be caught in the middle of a trade war, as the Canadian and Chinese governments face off on the international stage.

The Chinese government announced a new anti-dumping probe into Canadian canola, in retaliation to the Canadian government's recent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles.

“We just started to turn around where we had started to see about a week of gains and people started to realize this isn't that great of a crop. And then that was all wiped out yesterday,” said Stephen Vandervalk, who farms outside Fort Macleod.

Dumping is when a product is sold to another country at below market value.

China believes Canadian canola is priced low to help get Canadian producers a bigger share of the Chinese market.

“We will certainly participate as appropriate as part of that to demonstrate from our perspective the fair access and competitiveness of Canadian canola in that market,” said Chris Davison, Canola Council of Canada president and CEO.

Canadian canola prices have already taken a major hit just a day after the investigation was announced.

“Yesterday alone was a bit of a down day to start the day, $45 per tonne was wiped off,” said Vandervalk.

“I think we ended up down $22 a tonne. It's a 20 million tonne crop so a billion dollars was essentially wiped out,”

It's the latest problem in what's turned into a difficult month for farmers.

The recent CN and CPKC rail strikes cut off many farmers from being able to transport their products during harvest.

“Now we just add this to the mix. And some of it, the last two issues, the railway and this, were completely avoidable. Of all things we don't need to do is pile problems on,” Vandervalk said.

This isn't the first time China has moved to restrict imports of Canadian canola. In 2019, China banned canola shipments from Richardson and Vitera saying there were pests in shipments.