By Leo Quigley, AJOTThe mix of food crop exports north of the U.S./Canada border is changing gradually: but changing nevertheless from wheat to canola and specialty crops such as peas, lentils, canary seed and mustard seed - a large proportion of which moves in containers through Canadian ports. The fact that specialty crops open new markets to farmers – markets that are beyond the control of the Canadian Wheat Board and offer an alternative to board-controlled wheat and barley - is an incentive for many producers in Western Canadian. It has resulted in wheat acreage sliding from 34.0 million acres in 1986 – 1990 to 23.3 million acres in 2006 – 2010 while specialty crop acreage shot up from 1.8 million acres in 1986 – 1990 to 7.3 million acres in 2006 – 2010 and canola acreage more than doubled, climbing 7.3 million acres to 15.7 million acres For many specialty crop buyers containers offer several advantages: the boxes and are more manageable compared to bulk shipments, particularly if the product is bagged before being loaded. The container is also sealed by the shipper and the quality and identity of the product is retained during shipping. With bulk exports on the other hand the product is often run through a terminal where foreign matter such as weed seeds and chaff may be added to bring the otherwise clean product up to the limits established by the Canadian Grain Commission for a particular grade. From a logistics point of view containers arriving at a port such as Metro Vancouver are usually loaded with merchandise that has been shipped from Asia and, after being unloaded, the container can either be returned to Asia empty or loaded with a commodity such as peas or lentils, often at a favorable rate when compared to bulk shipping, Port Metro Vancouver prides itself on being a North American port with a high percentage of loaded export containers. In fact, Peter Xotta, Vice President, Planning and Operations, Port Metro Vancouver has told AJOT that the port ships “a broad range of commodities through the (Asia Pacific) Gateway. “These offset one another. “But, the real key strength of Vancouver is the offsetting that occurs between import and export containers.” But, even with these advantages, as large wholesale firms in Asia enter the specialty crop market the volumes involved are driving some products, such as peas, away from containers to large volume bulk shipment. For example, in 2000 – 2001 crop year the percentage of peas shipped in containers or direct truck and rail was 58 percent which increased to 69 percent by 2002 -2003. But, since that time the percentage of peas shipped by container has fallen off until in 2010 – 2011 it reached only 20 per cent. During the same period, however, the volume of peas exported increased by roughly a million tonnes from 2.29 million to 3.0 million. Brian Clancey, Senior Market Analyst at STAT Communications Ltd., said: “Viterra (Canada’s largest grain company) is probably the biggest pea exporter in Canada. Their advantage is their primary elevator system, not all elevators accept peas or lentils, but there are enough points in areas where they’re grown that they’ve become fairly competitive. Of course, farmers don’t have to deliver to Viterra, they can deliver to anybody and they’re looking at ‘what’s your price and how fast do you pay?’ “Viterra is very competitive in both of those areas. “Viterra’s also getting more interested in lentils. They were actually shipping the lentils out on what’s called a ‘farmer’s dressed’ basis where farmers deliver it directly to the elevator where it’s loaded into a hopper car (cylindrical grain car) and goes to port where it is directly loaded into a vessel. “They’re saying that this year farmers are coming at three to five percent foreign material and there’s a big debate in the industry because people think farmer dressed has the potential to hurt Canada’s reputation overseas.” However, he says the people saying that are people who operate a seed cleaning plants