An industry that doesn’t get a lot of press time is staking out a claim in the world market.

Canada’s estimated canola crop for 2013 is the highest ever, at nearly 16 million metric tonnes, according to study on production of principal crop yields released by Statistics Canada in September.

That’s on the back of exports that have tripled from 2001 to 2011, generating billions for the Canadian economy.

It’s the continuation of a long trend of near-continuous growth for the canola industry. Canada has important trading partners in Japan, China, Mexico and the United States.

Each trading partner has different needs. Japan and Mexico have a hunger for the canola seeds, since these imports support their seed-crushing and oil production industries at home. There is demand in China for canola meal, the high-protein by product of the crushing process that is used to feed livestock. And the U.S. imports both the oil and the meal for human and animal consumption.

Yet despite an existing industry that’s worth billions, the Canola Council of Canada is working to rectify what it sees as a modest share of the global market, about 20 per cent.

It’s been working with the Canadian government to follow through on what it call the Canola Market Access Plan, meant to break through existing impediments to grabbing a greater global market share.

Canola, an abbreviation of “Canadian oil,” is presented as one of Canada’s agricultural success stories.

The history of the important oilseed plant goes back to the first recorded crop yield 60 years ago. In World War II it was grown as an emergency measure when European supplies were cut off.

Canola, an abbreviation of “Canadian oil,” is presented as one of Canada’s agricultural success stories. Canola is mainly grown in three Prairies provinces – Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.

It’s a selectively bred strain of rapeseed, a plant whose oil-rich seeds were used in industry as lubricants and flammables.

But the old rapeseed strain was undesirable for producing edible oil because of relatively high levels of euric and eicosenoic acids in rapeseed oil.

In the 1970s a team of researchers from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the University of Manitoba used traditional plant breeding techniques to create a new plant, which they dubbed “canola” to differentiate it from the rapeseed strain.

A series of cross-breeding experiments in the 1960s and the 1970s resulted in a rapeseed plant without the undesirable acids and with a relatively low concentration of saturated fats.

“And so [they] developed over time, a very high-quality, high-yielding oil that has a considerable number of health qualities in terms of contributing to low cholesterol,” said Jan Dyer, Director of Government Relations at the Canadian Canola Growers Association.