b'THE NEWWhy Canadian Seed Companies Should Rethink TRADE MAP:the Global MarketplacePoliticsnot priceswill decide access to markets in a multipolar world. One analysts advice: diversify beyond China, treat food like energy, and build demand at home.By Marc ZienkiewiczBY THE TIME Jacob Shapiro finishesments are privileging and impacting warming up a room, he makes twothese things in a really meaningful way.promises: hes nothere to tell you whatThat shift matters disproportionately to think, and if you agree with every- to Canada because of concentration thing he says, hes failed. risk, especially in canola.Shapiro, director of research at TheShapiro argues that while Canadas Bespoke Group based in New Orleans,export values have risen, its market does what good provocateurs do. Heshare has slipped; less a story of domi-aims straight at one of the most comfort- nating global demand, more a story of ing stories in ag: that todays pain is justinflation and population growth lifting another down-cycle. the dollar value of trade. Meanwhile, I dont think that we are goinghe warns, Canadas agricultural exports through any kind of cyclical change inJacob Shapiro has a message for the ag space:are far and away less diversified than agriculture, Shapiro told the audiencewe are going through a fundamental reorderingother exporting powersleaving pro-in Winnipeg in February during theof how global agricultural trade works. ducers subject to the whims of whatever CropConnect Conference. I think wehappens in the White House.are going through a fundamental reor- From One Marketplace to a In general, the biggest example of dering of how global agricultural tradeWorld of Blocs this is canola, he says, describing the works the first in almost 100 years. Shapiros core frame is that the world issectors exposure to the United States For Canadas seed and crop ecosys- moving into what he calls a multipolarand China as a strategic vulnerability tembreeders, input providers, export- era: less a single, rules-based marketplacewith few obvious substitutes.ers, crushers, and the canola complexand more a patchwork of rival spheresthe message is blunt: the old playbookwhere market access can expand orThe Uncomfortable Idea: Importers are of grow more, export more, trust thevanish based on politics. Learning to Grow More at Homeglobal market to clear the surplus isHe asked the industry to stop think- The part of Shapiros talk most likely to colliding with a world that increasinglying about trade as an undifferentiatedstick with seed leaders wants to feed itself first. global marketplace where we all sendisnt a tariff predic-And in Shapiros telling, thatproduct out into and sing Kumbaya,tion or a partisan collision is about to get political. and start thinking about how govern- jab. Its the idea Shapiro argues that China will import what it needs from Canada, but wont hesitate to source elsewhere, or domestically, when it can.14 SEEDWORLD.COM/CANADA MARCH 2026'