Market Morsel: Canadian rains to impact fert and grain.

Inputs | 18th November 2021 | By Andrew Whitelaw

Market Morsel

Our commonwealth cousins just can’t get any luck this year. Firstly they get hit with the worst drought in years, if not decades. They now get the opposite, getting inundated with rainfall.

In recent days, twenty towns in British Columbia achieved new records for daily rainfall (see here). Unlike us, the Canadians have finished harvest. The biggest impact this deluge is having is on export flows.

There are images of the devastation being caused to infrastructure throughout the province (see here). Roads and rail are down in a large number of areas.

Whilst Canada has a smaller exportable grain surplus this year; there is likely to be delayed shipments. In recent days there have been no rail cars able to get to the port.  This is another small bullish factor impacting the market.

Fertilizer is also at risk. Vancouver is a major export port for Canadian potash, and are a large supplier to the global market (see charts below).  There is approximately 10.5mmt of potash exported from Vancouver each year (or an average of 200kmt per week).

Whilst the delay will likely only be for days and weeks, not months. This is another example of the thousand cuts to fertilizer in recent months.

Let’s hope they can get things moving again (at least for fertilizer 😉 )

 

Tags

  • Canada