Canola meal’s growing potential

January 12, 2026

key points from this story:

• Canola crush key to Yorkton economy
• Crush industry driven by oil demand
• Fifteen million tonnes crushed in 2026
• Meal markets crucial for profitability
• Aquaculture use study shows promise
• Future human food uses possible

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Last Mountain TimesCalvin Daniels

If you are a journalist in Yorkton and you see any reports regarding canola – particularly the crush industry side – you have to be immediately interested. With two huge canola crush facilities here the industry, and by extension canola, is a massive element of the local economy.

The crush industry exists of course because there is a demand for canola oil. Since Saskatchewan farmers are about as proficient as it gets in growing canola, the crush industry has established here, and fortunately for Yorkton, this city was the chosen location of two plants, both having expanded since their original construction.

So the plants exist because of the demand for what the rather high valued oil which comes from crushing canola seed. That of course leaves tonnes of meal – a byproduct of crushing – that needs to be dealt with. The Canadian crush in 2026 will be roughly 15 million tonnes, so there is a pile of meal to market somewhere.

The value of meal is limited by the markets which exist for it. That means anytime a new meal market is created it is almost like Santa bringing a present to the canola sector.

In that regard a recent www.producer.com story on a report presented at Canola Week 2025 regarding the potential to increase canola meal usage in aquaculture is an intriguing one. Livestock feeds are not typically a high value market for meal, but salmon as an example do tend to hold a higher value, so feed for them might fetch a solid price.

That of course is less important in some regards – at least to the crush industry – as they just need markets to absorb the meal. The crush profits have to come from the oil, so marketing meal is less about profits and more about need.

Of course the greater hope is that research will find new ways to use canola meal in markets which have a higher value. For example, can researchers find a way to make canola more palatable so that it can flow into the human food sector? Certainly, with the interest in meat substitutes based largely on a protein meal base of one kind or another, interest from canola researchers must be high.

Such uses for meal would be bigger news for farm producers because they would likely be more lucrative, and that might mean crushers would be willing to pass on at least a portion of higher meal sales to farmers. That would be a really seasonal gift one year down the road.