Oilseeds & Vegetable Oils

Canola is the category that most rewards getting the form right. Seed, crude oil, refined oil and meal are four different products commercially, four different products logistically, and (the part that catches exporters) frequently four different positions regulatorily. They do not share a tariff line, they do not necessarily share a registration route, and a duty position confirmed for refined oil tells you nothing reliable about seed.

That matters because the decision about which form to ship is often made on freight economics and crush margin rather than on regulatory cost, and the regulatory cost can move the answer. A buyer with domestic crushing capacity is buying seed; a buyer supplying a food manufacturer is buying refined oil to a specification; a feed compounder is buying meal as a protein input. Each of those conversations has a different set of documents behind it.

Canada is a large canola origin with an established crushing sector, so all four forms are genuinely available rather than notionally available, and the choice is a commercial one. Soybeans and flaxseed follow a similar logic on a smaller scale, with flaxseed additionally split between whole, milled and oil: where milling changes both the shelf life conversation and, often, the classification.

The sub-categories below reflect that split. Check the form you are actually buying rather than the crop, and take the per-market position from the product page for that form, where it is shown with its source and the date we last verified it.