Canada Wins $530M Pet Food Deal as China Trip Wraps

Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald wrapped his third trip to China with an updated pet food arrangement, now covering ruminant and poultry ingredients, that Ottawa estimates could be worth $530 million.

Canada and China have a two-year extension of the Preliminary Joint Arrangement covering canola meal, peas, lobster and crab, which Ottawa says is meant to give exporters more certainty.

Canola seed was Canada's largest agriculture and seafood export to China in 2025 at $1.5 billion, or 21.9% of the sector's shipments there, and the trip readout lists no change to its access.

Source: Farms.com, Nov. 10, 2026

Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald finished his third trip to China with an updated Canadian pet food arrangement that Ottawa estimates could be worth $530 million. It now covers ruminant ingredients as well as poultry, across processed and canned pet food, treats and chews.

MacDonald and Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu briefed industry on the two-year extension of the Preliminary Joint Arrangement covering canola meal, peas, lobster and crab. Translation: the relief that was supposed to expire at the end of this year now runs to the end of 2028.

In Beijing, MacDonald met Agriculture Minister Zhang Zhu on soil health, animal health and genetics, and Customs Minister Sun Meijun on the pet food file. In Shanghai, Canada was Guest Country of Honour at the import expo, with 44 exhibitors in the agri-food pavilion.

Meanwhile in Ottawa, APAS president Bill Prybylski sat down at the Chinese embassy with Xu Qingjun, the embassy's top economic and commercial official. He called it "very cordial," which in trade-speak is roughly a five-star review.

China used to be Canada's second-largest pet food market until restrictions on poultry-containing pet food hit in 2021. Canada shipped about $1 billion in dog and cat food worldwide last year, so getting that door back open is real money, even if it smells faintly of liver treats.

China is still Canada's second-biggest destination for ag, food and seafood exports, worth $6.7 billion in 2025. Ottawa has been running the "dependable supplier" charm offensive for months, and this was the victory lap.

Cattle guys, pay attention. "Ruminant ingredients" is government for beef byproducts. More outlets for the parts of the animal nobody puts on a menu is a quiet plus for packer margins, and some of that tends to roll downhill. That last bit is our inference, not something the government claimed.

Pea and canola meal growers get planning room. Prybylski said the extension gives producers more certainty heading into next spring. Two years of not refreshing the news every December is worth something.

Canola seed is still the elephant in the bin. It was the single largest export to China last year at $1.5 billion, and APAS says it still faces a combined 14.9% tariff, with canola oil carrying an extra 100%. Prybylski's summary: "Great news, but we still have work to do." The dogs got their deal. The canola is still waiting by the door with its leash in its mouth.

The University of Calgary's Simpson Centre broke down Alberta's referendum by riding, and the split is stark. In ridings less than 5% rural, 81.9% voted to stay in Canada. In ridings at least half rural, it was 57.3%.

Simpson Centre director Manuel Juarez says treating the result as case closed is a mistake: most people stayed, but "that doesn't mean that (the) problem goes away." Rural residents, he says, want a seat at the table, summed up as "nothing about me, without me."

The Western Producer points to the federal beef traceability proposals as a live irritant for thousands of ranchers. The centre's prescription: surveys, interviews, maybe a neutral go-between, and effort "on both sides."

So what? Ottawa's approach to rural Alberta has been conventional tillage: run over the same field eight times a season, then act surprised when the topsoil leaves for Saskatchewan. Policies drafted without farmers at the table tend to land badly at the farm gate, traceability being exhibit A.

In its Nov. 6 third-quarter report, TELUS listed "accelerating the monetization" of TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods and TELUS Health as a near-term priority. "Monetization" is corporate for "for sale, make us an offer."

CEO Victor Dodig told The Canadian Press the units are "probably best in the hands of other capital providers over time." The company wants $900 million in savings by the end of 2028 and is refocusing on telecom and AI. Sale proceeds go to paying down debt.

TELUS Agriculture launched in 2020 supporting software across more than 100 million acres in North America, Europe and Australia. No buyer or timeline has been named.

So what? If your agronomy, traceability or grain-marketing data runs through a TELUS platform, a sale means a new owner, and possibly new terms, pricing or priorities. Now is a good time to find out where your data lives and how you get it out. Farm software has a habit of changing landlords faster than farmland does.

A University of Saskatchewan study co-authored by Stuart Smyth found soil organic matter across Saskatchewan rose 41% over roughly three decades as farms moved to zero-till, using farm management data collected since the 1990s.

Smyth credits zero-till with less wind and water erosion and better water retention in drought. According to CAPI, 78% of Sask farms were zero-till as of 2021.

SARM president Bill Huber says the next step is more livestock and perennial grass, including selectively putting poorer land back into grass. Ceylon-area farmer Shawn Catherwood is going further: cover crops like triticale for more living root days, and bison arriving this winter.

So what? The air drill was the best piece of agtech this province ever bought, and it did its work by doing less. Better organic matter means better moisture holding, which matters a lot when the next dry year shows up unannounced, as dry years do. West-central Sask, for what it's worth, heads into winter with three-quarters of its cropland topsoil rated adequate in the province's final crop report.

Matt and Angela Kumlin run Lazy J Cattle Co., a fifth-generation ranch near Cochrane, Alta., on land the family has held since the late 1880s. Alberta Beef Producers profiled them for the UN's International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists.

Matt was a livestock vet until 2018, a career he chose as a backup after growing up through the BSE years. He came home part-time, and in 2021 the couple went all in. Angela grew up on a grain farm near Eston, Sask., which explains the patience.

The playbook: rotational and bale grazing, low-maintenance Angus-Polled Hereford cross cows, and GPS collars on about a quarter of the herd this year, building virtual fences and logging movement, pasture yield and regrowth. The plan is to collar every cow this fall. "Being able to move them virtually on a daily basis is going to be a big game changer," Matt says.

The payoff, per the family: native grasses came back, the land got more resilient, and they didn't have to destock through drought.

So what? Same lesson as the zero-till study, just with hooves. Give the ground a rest and it pays you back. And virtual fencing is moving from trade-show novelty to working ranch tool, one collar at a time, which is more than anyone can say for the last three fence posts you pounded in by hand.