Pulse farmers have spoken and what they’ve said is bewildering.
Statistics Canada’s annual poll of producer seeding intentions has
revealed that growers intend to plant 345,000 fewer acres of peas than
they did last year.
The projected 3.2 million acre pea crop would still be higher than the
five-year average of 2.7 million, but it would be down 11 percent from
last year’s 3.6 million acre crop.
“That one is kind of a mystery to me,” said Agriculture Canada special
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crops analyst Stan Skrypetz, who forecast a 3.7 million acre pea crop
at the beginning of April.
“If you look at the cost of production and so on, it still looks fairly
good if you pencilled out the returns compared to other crops.”
The only reason he can give for the lower pea number is that a lot of
producers in Saskatchewan had poor pea yields last year due to drought.
Saskatchewan Agriculture special crops specialist Ray McVicar was also
caught off guard by the pea number. His department was expecting a
similar sized crop to last year.
He attributes the wide variation in planting predictions to the fact
that farmers are more hesitant than usual to make seeding plans because
they are waiting for rain.
“I’ve been told time and time again by growers that they haven’t
decided yet,” said McVicar.
His hypothesis is supported by reports from seed growers that farmers
have booked seed but haven’t picked it up yet, and by inoculant
manufacturers who just started making sales in late April when they
usually move product in February and March.
While the pea numbers caught analysts off guard, there was no surprise
with lentils. Farmers in Saskatchewan told the federal statisticians
that they are going to plant 1.4 million acres of lentils, down 22
percent from last year’s 1.8 million acre crop.
Skrypetz had forecast a 10 percent drop in lentils, but he said that
was a conservative estimate that will soon be revised.
“Most people in the trade were kind of thinking more like similar to
last year. But personally, I felt that it could drop more than the 10
percent I had.”
Statistics Canada didn’t ask farmers their plans for chickpeas, but
Stat Publishing newsletter is projecting 960,000 acres, which is 23
percent smaller than last year’s crop. Others have forecast a drop in
acreage by as much as 40 percent.
McVicar said that might be a good thing.
Chickpea acreage exploded from 90,000 acres in 1998 to 1.2 million
acres last year. The rapid growth led to some poor farming practices.
Bad seed went into the ground last year and farmers pushed rotations to
capitalize on high chickpea prices. That led to a lot of disease. This
year, prices for the crop are down and so are seeding expectations.
“It might not be a bad thing to get rotations back under control and
seed quality improved and respond to the market signals,” said McVicar.
“We’re at the place where we should slow down and improve.”
Bean growers, on the other hand, are set to ramp up production.
Manitoba farmers plan to seed 150,000 acres of dry white beans, up
from 105,000 acres last year. They will stand pat on coloured beans at
95,000 acres.
There were no bean numbers for Saskatchewan or Alberta, but
Saskatchewan Pulse Growers executive director Garth Patterson expects
to see 30,000 acres of beans in his province, up from 20,000 last year.
