Canola's Economic Impact

January 6, 2025

Key points from this story:

• Canola is major economic driver in Saskatchewan
• Yorkton hosts two major canola crush facilities
• Canola oil is primary product, meal a byproduct
• Meal traditionally challenging to market profitably
• Alberta company exploring canola meal for fish feed
• New market could diversify crush sector outlets

If you happen to be a journalist who really got his start because of an interest in agriculture, and you happen to ply your trade in Saskatchewan and in particular in Yorkton, then your interest is immediately peaked when you see a positive development in the canola sector reported on. Certainly in terms of Saskatchewan agriculture the crop has become the major economic driver in terms of crop-generated income.

As the agriculture sector has endeavoured to create more value-added processing, again the canola sector has been a major driver in that direction thanks to the canola crushing sector. That is particularly true here in Yorkton where two major players; Richardson and LDM, have built major crush facilities that each has expanded over the years as well. When it comes to the crush sector of course the focus is oil - canola oil being a highly sought after commodity.