P.E.I. soybean farmers keeping eye on 'volatile' U.S.

It's too early to tell whether Chinese tariffs on U.S. soybeans would help or hurt Island farmers, says the head of the P.E.I. Federation of Agriculture.

Executive director Robert Godfrey says the P.E.I. price for soybeans dropped six per cent Wednesday after China announced the 25 per cent tariffs.

About 16 per cent of the Island's acreage was soybeans last year, and Godfrey expects the same amount about 66,000 acres to be planted in the next few weeks.

The challenge is, if U.S. farmers have to find new markets, they might flood countries P.E.I. is already shipping to.

"If the U.S. is not going to be shipping soybeans to China then they'regoing to be shipping them somewhere else," he said.

"But I think it's important to point out things are so volatile right now. The president of the United States sometimes changes his mind in a 140 characters in a tweet so there's no certainty as to what this will actually mean."

Godfrey said P.E.I. currently ships soybeans to countries such as Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Germany and China.

Given the uncertainty, he said the best strategy is to continue to diversify export markets for P.E.I. soybeans, with Europe being a potential opportunity.

More P.E.I. news