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Canadian farmers will harvest more than six million tonnes of soybeans starting this month, but with their top market gone and another crowded with a competing surplus of U.S. beans, they aren’t sure where they’ll be sold.

“It’s something that comes up in my thought process every day,” said Ernie Sirski, a Manitoba soybean farmer and board chair of Soy Canada. “China was such a significant player for us last year and that’s all gone. Going forward it’s going to be very challenging as to what we do.”

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It’s got to move and if it can’t move, what are we going to do? Dump it in the St. Lawrence? Ron Davidson, Soy Canada’s executive director

Shipments of Canadian soybeans to China – the world’s largest buyer of the oilseed – have remained negligible since December, when police arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver on an extradition request from the United States. The plunge came after sales had surged 80 per cent in 2018 – when a Chinese tariff on U.S. beans left the Asian superpower to seek alternate markets such as Canada.