Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you to the committee for the opportunity to be here. I'm here representing the soybean value chain. This includes our farmers across the country, our seed developers, our processors and our exporters. We have a diverse industry from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains, and it includes farmers like Brendan.
Soybeans are the third most valuable crop here in Canada, with exports around $3 billion in 2021. We produce world-leading food-grade soybeans, as Brendan explained, for things like soy milk and tofu as well as commodity beans that are crushed into meal for livestock as well as oil for humans and oil for biofuel.
With more than 70% of our production exported, we're very focused on global markets. We appreciate your attention to the Indo-Pacific, because it's a really important growth opportunity for us. Before I describe the most important ways we can increase growth in trade, I'd like to share why we see it as such an important opportunity.
From a soybean perspective, the Indo-Pacific is the heartbeat of global soybean demand. Take the ASEAN region as an example. It imports approximately $9.1 billion of soybeans each year. Our Canadian exports are worth about $380 million to this region. There's a lot of opportunity for us to grow market share. At the same time, demand is growing significantly for our products in these regions.
For example, looking at the Philippines and the annual growth rate for soybeans used for food purposes, the growth rate has been approximately 12% every year over the last five years. It's a large market and a growing market for us. For all of us, the question facing us today is how we can take advantage of this demand to increase the growth opportunities. For us, it means better access to these markets, and to do that we need three things.
First, we need to eliminate tariffs and establish ongoing regulatory co-operation on plant, animal and environmental health issues through our trade agreement negotiations with Indonesia. Eliminating tariffs would be really helpful for us, because we face uncertainty. Should Indonesia decide to, they could raise tariffs on our products up to 27%. But eliminating tariffs is not enough. We also need to address non-tariff issues like sanitary and phytosanitary issues or other barriers to trade related to regulations. These issues can appear suddenly. They can create costs and create risks, and can even stop our exports.
In conversation with government last week, I asked when the last time was that we had regulator-to-regulator interaction between Canada and Indonesia. The answer...? I'm still waiting to hear it too.
Secondly, we need to secure access to India for our food-grade soybeans. Increasing food-grade exports to India is a real opportunity for growth, given the size of that economy and the growing demand for our products. Currently, we face tariffs of 45% on our soybeans going to India. The tariffs are also very unpredictable. They could be changed, at a moment's notice, up to 100%.
Our soybean trade with India is actually quite interesting. We import a lot of organic soybeans from India that come into Canada without a tariff. While we as Canadians face really high tariffs exporting our soybeans into India, Indian soybeans come into Canada tariff-free. It's also interesting, because other countries can export to India without the tariffs that we face. That has caused us to not be able to take advantage of opportunities in India. Recently, our food-grade soybeans were trading at a $100-per-tonne premium into India, or the opportunity was there, but because India could source without a tariff from other origins, we ended up selling those soybeans elsewhere.
The third thing we need to do is invest in industry-government collaboration to proactively prevent non-tariff issues throughout the ASEAN and Asia-Pacific and Indo-Pacific regions. Increased collaboration and investment would reduce risks and costs while helping to enable innovation on Canadian farms.
I will give you two examples of how this is hurting us and how it could be made better. The first example is in Vietnam, where we are unable to export our soybeans in bulk. While beans produced just steps away, in some cases, in the United States can be exported in bulk vessels to Vietnam, we are not able to do that because of concerns around sanitary and phytosanitary issues.
Secondly, when it comes to regulation of seed and crop protection technologies, throughout the regions, regulations are evolving. The result that ends up happening is that as regulations evolve, they may not evolve in the same way that they are evolving in Canada. Technology for new seeds and new crop protection products may be approved here but not in our export markets. That means we can't use them until they're approved.