Natural disasters and trade bans are creating a perfect storm for Australian vegetable oil producers as prices skyrocket globally.
War in Ukraine and a drought in Canada have left a hole in the market, which has been filled by Australia's record harvest.
Canola on the world market is now worth $1,184.70 CAD per tonne, according to the Canada Price Index, which has almost doubled from about $680 a year ago.
Prices in Australia are at all-time highs, exceeding $1,000 a tonne over the past six months.
The prices have been described by the Australia Oilseeds Federation as "astronomical".
Chief executive Nick Goddard said he expected prices to remain high due to the tight global supply and a record national harvest of 6.4 million tonnes last year could see Australian farmers earn big money this year.
"The situation in Ukraine has provided just another high platform for pricing of canola," Mr Goddard said.
He said high demand for biofuels across Europe and the United States was another factor.
Global market unrest
Most recently, the Indonesian government banned the export of palm oil last Friday.
Being the world's largest supplier, analysts predict the demand for other oilseeds will rise as a result.
"On the supermarket shelves in Indonesia, they're seeing vegetable oil prices rising, so to try and contain that, the government has prohibited export of palm oil," he said.
"With this sort of pricing level, it will more than likely encourage growers to reconsider how much space they might allocate to canola, and we could see again a fairly large area planted to canola," he said.
Andrew Whitelaw from Thomas Elder markets said palm oil is the most commonly used across the world.
"It's meant that canola futures around the world in Canada and France have boosted higher — same as soybean oil," Mr Whitelaw said.
"We should start to see some of that positivity in price overseas flow through to Australian prices," he said.
He said even if the cost per tonne was to fall $200 this year, they were still good prices.
Favourable seasonal conditions are forecast across the east coast of Australia for the coming months, with the La Nina predicted to continue.
Optimism for the season ahead
Farmers across central west New South Wales are wrapping up the planting of canola.
Chris Groves, who runs a mixed-cropping enterprise between Cowra and Canowindra, said with the current prices, "a lot of people would love to put in more canola".
Mr Groves said the short burst of rain off the back of a dry few months had created an ideal planting season.
"It just gives the people that are planting a lot of confidence to go ahead, maybe put that little bit of extra fertiliser on and hope for a good year.
Although he warned, prices would need to remain high to make up for what he described as "exorbitant" input costs.
"The fertiliser has just about doubled in cost. Fuel is costing us an absolute fortune, even the price of canola seed has gone up quite a bit," he said.
