Oat sector eyes potential opportunity in China

Canada is the world’s largest exporter of oats.

China is the world’s second largest importer of oats.

This seems, on paper, like a good opportunity for a trading relationship.

However, Canada only ships a tiny volume of oats to China because Australia and Russia supply 98.7 per cent of the country’s annual oat imports, says OatInformation.com, an oat market intelligence firm.

The main obstacle blocking exports is the lack of a phytosanitary protocol for Canadian raw oats in China.

“We can send them processed oats and we can send seed oats, but we cannot send raw oats,” said Shawna Mathieson, Prairie Oat Growers Association executive director.

That’s a problem because China wants to import raw oats rather than milled oats from its suppliers.

“The thing with China, they have a lot of milling capacity…. They want to take the raw oats so they can use their own mills.”

China’s phytosanitary issues with Canadian oats is a bit of mystery because Chinese officials won’t specify the problem or concern, Mathieson said.

From 2019-25, sorting out the problem wasn’t an option for Canada’s oat industry because of poor diplomatic relations between the two countries.