Canola oil is in kitchens all over America. But the crop behind it grows in one cold, faraway corner — and its very name gives the secret away.
Canola is a crop with fields of bright-yellow flowers, in the same plant family as cabbage and mustard. Its tiny seeds are crushed to squeeze out canola oil.
Basis: Botany: canola is a type of rapeseed (Brassica), an oilseed crop — textbook.
The name “canola” was coined in Canada — short for “Canadian oil, low acid” — the name for a mild, food-safe rapeseed bred by Canadian scientists in the 1970s.
Basis: Food history: the canola name was trademarked in Canada in the 1970s for low-erucic-acid rapeseed — well documented.
Canola likes cool weather, so America grows almost all of it in the cold northern Plains, right along the Canadian border — not in a hot, sunny place.
Basis: USDA NASS canola production by state (this site's canola quiz); canola is a cool-season crop — established.
Why the far north again — dry beans, sugar beets, lentils, and now canola? A tidy explanation is that these hardy crops all like cool summers and a dry harvest. It fits, but every crop belt also grew from its own tangled history.
※ A hypothesis is an idea that isn't proven yet.
📊 Sources for the rankings mentioned in this note (links to the original data and retrieval dates) are on each quiz page below.