U.S. tariffs on Canadian canola industry will have widespread, devastating impacts

Feb 04, 2025

Today, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that tariffs of 25 per cent will be applied to imports of a broad range of Canadian goods, including canola seed, oil and meal, effective February 4, 2025.

“The application of these tariffs on Canadian-grown canola and canola products will be felt across the canola value chain,” says Chris Davison, Canola Council of Canada (CCC) President & CEO. “Tariffs will have devastating impacts on farmers, input providers, canola crushing activities and exports of canola seed, oil and meal.”

The U.S. is Canada’s number one market for canola exports and also a market that is highly integrated with the Canadian canola industry. Total export value in 2023 was $8.6 billion, including almost 3 million metric tonnes (MMT) of canola oil valued at $6.3 billion and more than 3.5 MMT of canola meal valued at $2.0 billion.

Canola is the single largest contributor to farm crop cash receipts – grown by nearly 40,000 farmers across the country.

“The damaging blow of these duties will be felt by every canola farmer, starting with the price they receive at delivery and will extend to the full range of their operations, ultimately reducing farm profitability,” says Rick White, Canadian Canola Growers Association (CCGA) President & CEO. “The destructive consequences for our farms, as well as our rural and national economies, are evident.”

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Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”

U.S. tariffs on Canadian canola industry will have widespread, devastating impacts

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Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

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