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Though Canadian officials have not confirmed whether any other Canadian crops have faced disruptions in trade with China, “I can tell you there is a great deal of nervousness,” Davidson said.

“We’re not in the canola dispute now but who knows what happens tomorrow,” he said. “There’s angst about that.”

Though the surge in soybean purchases from China was initially seen as a boon for Canadian farmers, industry leaders warned that other unintended fallout from the U.S.-China dispute would ultimately offset any gains. The levies have already driven down U.S. soybean prices, a shift that has also hurt farmers north of the border, where prices are linked by formula to those in the U.S. soybeans are now trading at $8.95 per bushel, down from $10.50 in May.

What’s more, with the U.S. shut out of the vast Chinese market after a record 2018 to 2019 harvest, about 30 million tonnes of U.S. soybeans were left to seek alternative markets. That’s forced Canadian farmers to compete with a flood of cheap U.S. beans in many other markets where they had previously enjoyed a strong and expanding foothold — most notably Europe.

Exports of Canadian soybeans to the European Union fell 45 per cent in 2018 to just over 697,000 tonnes, with shipments to Spain alone falling 99 per cent to 2,299 tonnes. Meantime, the amount of U.S. soybeans coming north into Canada soared, rising 52 per cent to 918,217 tonnes in 2018.

“The Chinese demand coming to Canada represents short-term gain for long-term pain,” said Markus Haerle, a soybean farmer and chair of the Grain Farmers of Ontario. “We’ve lost so much share in Europe where we had very high volumes. Now we’ve got imported beans being sold in our domestic market at an even lower cost.”