(Commodity News Service Canada) –– Cash bids for mustard in Western Canada continue to be classified as steady with little hope of advancing in the near future.
“Essentially, it comes down to there being an absence of demand” for the various types of Canada’s mustard, said Cam Laxdal, manager of the Winnipeg export sales office for Saskatchewan special crops processor Lakeside Global Grains.
There has been a noticeable lack of demand from European outlets for oriental, brown and yellow mustard from Canada, he said. That lack of demand was attributed to a larger than expected mustard harvest in Eastern Europe.
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“The quality of the mustard from Eastern Europe is not as good as Canada’s, but it has obviously been workable,” he said.
Some of the major western European importers now have cleaning and storage facilities which have been cleaning up the product from Eastern Europe.
“The end-users, as a result, are not as reliable buyers of the high-quality Canadian mustard as they have been in the past,” Laxdal said. “That has taken some of the market away from Canada, and whether that is permanent or a short-term issue is still unknown at this point.”
Mustard production in Eastern Europe has been extremely variable from year to year. However, it appears mustard production there has become more consistent, with acres rising on regular basis.
“As a result, demand for Canada’s mustard, going forward, could be on the decline,” Laxdal said.
Cash bids for yellow mustard in Western Canada, based on Prairie Ag Hotwire data, currently range from 20 to 23.5 cents per pound, for brown mustard 15 to 19 cents and for oriental mustard 17 to 21 cents.
At the beginning of October, yellow mustard bids ranged from 21 to 23.5 cents, brown from 17 to 19 cents and for oriental 19 to 21 cents.
