OUTLOOK, Sask. — Anthony Eliason crouches and digs out a canola seedling, its tiny first leaves spreading from the stem. The top layer of dirt is already dryer than he would like, which is why he planted the seeds deeper than usual last month. By that time, China had launched a trade war against Canada—targeting canola exports and other high-value crops. Eliason had settled on canola months before seeding, based on years of previous planning, and it was too late to change course. “Crop’s in the ground,” he had said with a laugh. “So I’m committed now.”

Eliason, 39, and his family run Golden Dee Farms, which spans roughly 4,000 acres about 75 kilometres south of Saskatoon. The family spread typically generates $1.5 million a year in gross revenue. Eliason would welcome more rain, but his farm has access to irrigation that gives him some security against drought.

Still, he does not yet know whether his canola will end up on the market, or languish in bins until it goes bad. Eliason hedged a bit this year and planted 300 fewer acres of canola than usual, reducing his total to 1,200 acres. That is about the only wiggle room he and other farmers have. So much else depends on external forces: weather, transportation, where canola fits into a multi-year crop rotation and the price it fetches on the commodities market.

If that was not enough uncertainty, producers are being punished by Beijing for Canada’s choice to side with the United States in trade policy toward China. It was a move Ottawa made before the second election of President Donald Trump, or the onset of his global trade offensive, but it landed Canadian canola farmers in a pincer between the world’s two largest economies. What would help now, Eliason says, is a “reset.”

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Last October, the Liberal government of then-prime minister Justin Trudeau slapped 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles and 25 per cent duties on many imports of steel and aluminum from China. Ottawa described it as a response to the “extraordinary threat” of unfair competition from manufacturers in China, where government policy has fuelled production overcapacity that leads to Chinese exports flooding other markets. It was also in lockstep with the Biden administration, which made similar arguments when it increased its tariffs on Chinese-made EVs, steel and aluminum. Those took effect in September.

Beijing quickly signalled it planned to hit back. Before Canada’s EV tariffs took effect, China’s commerce ministry announced an anti-dumping probe into Canadian canola, arguing the volume of exports had risen by 170 per cent over the year before amid falling prices. The details of China’s response did not emerge until March, though, when Ottawa was navigating the full-blown trade war launched by Trump. China announced it would impose 100 per cent tariffs on Canadian peas, canola oil and canola meal, as well as 25 per cent tariffs on some pork and seafood. Those took effect on March 20.

The canola sector contributes about $43.7 billion to the Canadian economy, according to a report prepared for the Canola Council of Canada last year that takes the full supply chain into account, including transportation, port activity and the farming itself. In Saskatchewan, canola grows on about 30 per cent of cropland and accounts for more than 40 per cent of farm cash receipts, which include both sales and subsidies. The sector generates about $19.8 billion per year and supports about 91,700 jobs in the province. That means Saskatchewan has the most to lose.

China’s trade action is relatively narrow. Canada exported about $939 million worth of canola oil and canola meal to China in 2024, which is less than a quarter of the value of unprocessed canola seeds it shipped to the country last year. Still, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has said the tariffs on canola and peas are more harmful to his province than the broader tariffs that came from Trump. He began urging Prime Minister Mark Carney to reach out to China’s President Xi Jinping and resolve the issue quickly—even if it meant Canada lifting its tariffs on Chinese EVs.

Chinese Ambassador Wang Di has said the suite of counter-tariffs announced in March will stay in place as long as Canada keeps its duties on Chinese steel, aluminum and electric vehicles. That presents Carney with a dilemma, because even as it levels tariffs on its northern neighbour, the U.S. wants Canada to stay on its side in the fight to curtail China’s influence in this part of the world. After Carney met last week with provincial and territorial premiers in Saskatoon, the joint statement said Ottawa would work urgently to remove the Chinese tariffs, but the prime minister would not say whether Canada was prepared to lift the tariffs on Chinese-made EVs.

Last Thursday, he spoke with Chinese Premier Li Qiang and the two agreed their countries would communicate more regularly. A readout from the Prime Minister’s Office said Carney “took the opportunity to raise trade irritants affecting agriculture and agri-food products, including canola and seafood,” but it did not mention Canada’s tariffs. 

This is not the first time China has gone after Canadian canola. In March 2019, China banned two major Canadian canola seed exporters—Richardson and Viterra—from its market in a move widely seen as retaliation for Canada’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition warrant. The suspension ended in May 2022. The council estimates it cost the industry as much as $2.35 billion in the first year and a half that it went on.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said it is hard to figure out what to do when any move affects Canada’s two largest markets. “I don’t think that the United States should care if we want to sell pork and canola to China. Maybe they do care about China selling steel and aluminum into our market. Maybe they do care about the threat of Chinese EVs crowding out their market,” Smith said last week in an interview with The Logic.

“I still don’t quite know how we’re going to square that circle, because the Chinese have understood that the way to create maximum leverage on the EV issue is to punish food producers,” Smith continued. That tension is playing out between premiers, she added, noting that the auto sector threatened by Trump is important to Ontario, while China’s tariffs are hurting producers in Western Canada. 

Alberta exported $1.15 billion worth of canola to China in 2024, while just under $69 million worth went to the U.S. Overall, though, Alberta’s exports of goods to the U.S. are much greater than those to China. “This is a new relationship we’ve got to navigate with two superpowers of equal market strength who want different things of us,” Smith said. “We really are caught in the middle.”

Canola farmers feel the same way. The trade measures—and the uncertainty—are affecting the price of canola seed, which farmers sell to grain elevators for a price set by the commodities market. Shortly after China announced the tariffs, the price for the top grade of canola dropped to about $531 per tonne. It was back up to $662 by last week, but that could change again.

“Being farmers, we’re price takers,” says Dean Roberts, a farmer from near Coleville, Sask., who also chairs the board of directors at SaskCanola, an industry association. “Whatever the price is at the elevator on a given day or marketing day when we price it, that’s all we really can do.”

About 25 per cent of the 8,500-acre farm that Roberts operates as a joint venture with his father and uncle is dedicated to canola. Another 25 per cent goes to pulse crops such as peas or lentils, while the remaining half goes to wheat. Planting typically begins in April, but seeds are often ordered as early as November.

Roberts’s crop rotations are a study in the planning and variables that go into modern farming. He runs them on a four-year cycle to help manage the risks of insects, disease and even the markets. The land where he planted canola this year will take a cereal crop such as wheat next year, then a pulse crop the year after that. Then he goes back to cereal because growing lentils in too short a rotation can lead to root rot. Residue from fertilizer also limits the choice of crop next year. 

That is why it would not have been feasible for farmers like Roberts and Eliason to skip canola this year—even if signs of trouble were there before they bought the seeds. Besides, the world could change all over again within a year.

“Farmers are no stranger to risk. We’re no stranger to market challenges, but the level of uncertainty in the last number of years feels unprecedented,” says Roberts. “Maybe it isn’t, but it sure feels like we’re jumping from one challenge to the next at faster and faster rates.”

To be a farmer, he says, is to be the ultimate generalist, applying chemistry knowledge to plant health one day, and mechanical skills to a tractor the next. But there is no manual for navigating the complexities of a global trade war. “When I was choosing that career path,” Roberts says, “I never really thought I’d be contemplating geopolitical risk as part of that matrix.”