By Rod Nickel
WINNIPEG, Manitoba, May 5 (Reuters) – Canadian canola stocks jumped to an all-time high, and wheat supplies swelled to the biggest level in 20 years, Statistics Canada said on Monday, after a bumper crop and transportation bottlenecks produced huge piles on the Prairies.
Canola futures were down a little Monday morning, but the reaction to the Statscan report was muted. A decline could be expected after the strong rally on Friday.
Wheat markets were up Monday morning, reacting to the hot weather in hard red winter states.
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Statscan pegged canola stocks as of March 31 at 9.02 million tonnes, nearly double last year’s level. All-wheat supplies reached 21.25 million tonnes, up 47 percent from 2013 and the most since 1994.
“The wheat number is significant for the North American market, because obviously there is a shrinking (U.S.) hard red winter crop,” said Ken Ball, a broker at PI Financial Corp in Winnipeg. “If we can get the (Canadian) wheat down there, it may balance out the North American wheat market.”
Sweltering temperatures in the Southern U.S. Plains have deepened fears about weather damage to the U.S. hard red winter wheat crop.
ICE Canada July canola futures were down 0.2 percent, similar to their level prior to the report.
Late ice cover on the Great Lakes has compounded a backlog in moving Western Canadian grain, which piled up due to the frigid winter and record harvest, overwhelming railways that transport crops to port.
Farmers were stuck with most of the increase in crop supplies. Statscan said commercial stocks of both wheat and canola declined year over year, while on-farm storage jumped.
The three Prairie provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba held record volumes of canola in farm bins and temporary storage.
Farmers struggled during the winter to find buyers for their crops at profitable prices as commercial grain handlers said railways delivered far fewer grain hopper cars than needed.
Canada is usually the world’s second- or third-largest wheat exporter and the biggest shipper of canola, a cousin of rapeseed used largely to produce vegetable oil.
Statscan surveyed 11,424 farmers from March 24 to 31. The report comes just as farmers get set to begin planting.
