Emergency: No mustard in French supermarkets

One day, I tweeted a picture of my brown mustard crop noting that harvest wasn’t far away. Soon after, I received a request from a French television journalist wanting to travel from Paris to my farm.

It seems that mustard, specifically Dijon, made from brown mustard is sold out in French supermarkets, creating something akin to a national emergency. The journalist spoke to me by phone and got directions to the farm. Several days later, as promised, he drove into the yard in a rented car.

His camera operator had encountered a Visa program and would be delayed a day, but he had most of the camera equipment and would work solo until the camera operator caught up.

His English was pretty good, probably better than his understanding of economics and definitely better than his understanding of crop production. He knew that Canada, the main world exporter of mustard had suffered a drought, but he was rather indignant that we could ever allow France to run short of mustard seed.

I tried to explain that 2021 was the worst drought in decades with southern Saskatchewan particularly hard hit. I also pointed out that mustard acreage had been declining because other cropping options looked more profitable.

Of course, all that changed this year with astonishingly high mustard prices and a big boost in acres. Plus, the average yield will be much better than last year’s dismal level.

I showed him my mustard crops and assured him that harvest was close and it wouldn’t be long before production would again be exported to customers. That wasn’t enough to quell the French dissatisfaction that he echoed.

What would I think if France just grew all of its own mustard so that it didn’t have to rely on Canada anymore?

I tried to be diplomatic, just like you should be with any customer. I told him that farmers appreciated all of their export customers and tried to provide the quality and quantity desired.

What about solutions to prevent this from happening again? Well, a drought this severe in a year with such reduced mustard acreage should be rare. However, longer term production contracts could perhaps take some of the acreage and price volatility out of the market and be a benefit to both farmers and buyers.

Another solution might be more storage capacity to act as a buffer for production shortfalls.

What would I do, he asked, if France just quit buying brown mustard from Canada? That would be regrettable, I told him, since I like growing brown mustard. However, it’s a minor acreage crop and there are a dozen other crops I could grow instead.

The interview with me was just one of many and it’s hard to say whether the story will end up balanced. In a past life, I was a farm news television journalist, so I have a soft spot for reporters trying to do their jobs. You don’t have any chance of favourable coverage if you aren’t willing to explain your side of the story.

It’s a shame that consumers, internationally as well as domestically, don’t take more time to understand where their food comes from and how it’s produced until a supply issue emerges.

In developed nations, food abundance is taken for granted. The store almost always has the wide diversity of products we’ve come to expect. In a volatile and ever-changing world, we shouldn’t assume that will always be the case.