A West Coast Reduction worker inspects a shipment being delivered to their location for export at the Port of Vancouver.

Renewable diesel boom highlights challenges in clean-energy transition

As the industry scrambles to meet new demand, agriculture could benefit

Reuters – For 17 years, trucker Colin Birch has been hitting the highways to collect used cooking oil from restaurants. He works for Vancouver-based renderer West Coast Reduction, which processes the grease into a material to make renewable diesel, a clean-burning road fuel. That job has recently got much harder. Birch is caught between soaring

ICE May 2021 canola (candlesticks) with 30-day moving average (green line) and CBOT May 2021 soyoil (yellow line). (Barchart)

ICE weekly outlook: Canola’s correction likely short-lived given tight supplies

MarketsFarm — The ICE Futures canola market ran into a profit-taking correction on Wednesday, backing away from recently-hit contract highs. While a further correction is possible, the underlying fundamentals remain supportive and canola is expected to retain its relative strength to other oilseeds. “The market needs bullish fuel, but it’s just not getting any,” said



(GZKele/iStock/Getty Images)

Sunflower seed market falls back to Earth

MarketsFarm — Sunflower growers in Canada took off a bumper crop in 2020, almost hitting the 100,000-tonne mark for the first time since 2010. The forecast for this year’s crop isn’t as sunny. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s latest outlook, released earlier this month, predicts the national sunflower seed crop in 2021 at 75,000 tonnes off


ICE March 2021 canola with 20-, 50- and 100-day moving averages. (Barchart)

ICE weekly outlook: Profit-taking to pressure canola

Market appearing overdone

MarketsFarm — ICE Futures canola contracts climbed to record highs during the week ended Wednesday as concerns over tightening old-crop supplies provided support. However, the market was looking overdone to the upside and profit-taking came forward to put some pressure on values. “The traders that are still long are playing the game of forcing the



ICE March 2021 canola with 20-, 50- and 100-day moving averages. (Barchart)

ICE weekly outlook: WASDE spillover boosts canola

Canola may soon become price-sensitive, analyst says

MarketsFarm — Sharp increases in soybean, corn and wheat futures on Tuesday, following the release of the latest supply and demand report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), in turn spilled over into canola. The most significant factors in USDA’s world agricultural supply and demand estimates (WASDE) were further reductions to ending stocks for



(Getty Images)

Grain, seed corn growers get access to seasonal worker program

Maple syrup also added to national commodity list

Growers of grains, oilseeds and seed corn and maple syrup producers may be able to get in on the federal Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) for the 2021 season. Federal Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough announced Nov. 27 the national commodity list (NCL) would be expanded to include seed corn, oil seed, grains and maple syrup

(PortOfHalifax.ca)

Grain, oilseed exports well ahead of year-ago

Chinese demand up substantially for Canada's crops

MarketsFarm — Canadian grain exports continue to run at a very solid pace, with canola, wheat and barley movement-to-date all up substantially on the year. Total exports of Canada’s major grains and oilseeds as of Nov. 29 came in at 18.9 million tonnes, according to Canadian Grain Commission (CGC) data. That’s up by nearly five