Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for the invitation to share our perspective on the development of a food policy for Canada. We always welcome the opportunity. Your chair has already introduced me as Dale Adolphe. I'm the interim executive director of Soy Canada, and Chris Masciotra is Soy Canada's director of corporate affairs.
I'm going to start by providing a bit of an update on the growth of the Canadian soybean sector before discussing our recommendations related to a national food policy.
Soybeans are new to parts of Canada, particularly western Canada, and Soy Canada is relatively new, in that we're only three years old. Our members include producer associations representing farmers from across the country, seed development companies, soybean exporters and processors.
Our goal as Soy Canada is to unite the soybean sector, facilitate co-operation, and represent the industry on domestic and international issues surrounding market access, trade, market development, and research.
The Canadian soybean sector is currently experiencing what could be called explosive growth. This year our industry has reached new heights, with all segments of the industry seeing strong growth and development.
In 2017, seeded acreage increased by a third over last year to 7.3 million acres. Production is set to climb by 20% over the same period to 7.7 million tonnes. Much of this growth, as I mentioned, is taking place in western Canada where production has more than doubled in the last 12 years.
In 2016, farm cash receipts from soybean production rose to $2.9 billion, an increase of 20% from the year before, and exports of soybeans and soybean products continue to trend upward. In 2016, exports reached 4.84 million tonnes at a value of just under $3 billion.
We are now in our 10th consecutive year of growth, and more and more producers are turning to soybeans as a reliable and profitable commodity to include in their crop rotations. Today, more than 31,000 Canadian farmers are growing soybeans, and that's up about 16% over the last five years.
Now I will turn it over to Chris.