Industry groups and processors are scraping their windshields in an attempt to gather intelligence on the Aug. 20 frost but all they’ve managed to clear so far is a giant question mark.
Barley may be the exception to the rule. Evidence is mounting that the damage may not be as bad as first feared.
Jack Foster, director of barley procurement for Prairie Malt Ltd., doesn’t anticipate maltsters will have trouble finding the 2.5 million tonnes of designated barley the Canadian Wheat Board requires for its marketing program.
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“We’re very optimistic that we’re going to have a better-than-average kind of quality year.”
There have been plenty of doom and gloom forecasts in the agriculture sector since Aug. 20, but when fact is separated from fiction there will be “big volumes” of good-quality, low-protein barley for export and domestic use, Foster said.
The crop appears to have withstood cold temperatures better than canola because it was closer to maturity when the frost hit.
There will likely be some chitting, or sprouting, of two-row barley lying in swaths due to the rains that preceded and followed the frost and there has been “cosmetic” staining of seeds, but by and large new crop samples appear to be in good shape.
An estimated 10 percent of the barley will be eliminated for malt consideration because of unacceptably high levels of protein compared to 70 percent in 2003.
“For the most part it’s a return to normal protein levels,” Foster said.
For other crops, the production outlook still has an icy haze about it.
JoAnne Buth, vice-president of crop production at the Canola Council of Canada, said damage varies between regions, farms and even fields.
“The crop is so different out there in terms of staging because of the kind of spring we had. It’s just all over the map.”
Getting a bead on crop recovery has also proven difficult because of continued cool temperatures and frequent rain.
“In some fields we probably won’t even know until they combine.”
Buth has discovered she can’t rely on Environment Canada temperature data because of numerous conflicting reports from farmers.
“It has been really hard to estimate what is happening.”
The Statistics Canada July 31 production report projected an 8.2 million tonne canola crop. Some canola marketers feel the total will drop by as much as one million tonnes due to frost damage.
Buth didn’t offer projections but said there are still canola areas in good condition.
“Compared to the last two years where we had lower crops, we still might have a substantial amount of No. 1.”
Gary Galbraith, Canadian production manager for Cargill Ltd., said the frost is definitely a cause for concern for companies such as Cargill that have contracts with end users. But he believed there will still be a good supply of quality canola.
“Our gut feel is we’ll be OK in being able to supply what we agreed to because the crop was going to be a large crop.”
Dennis Galbraith, manager of grain procurement for Can-Oat Milling, didn’t have a gut feeling for the oat crop.
“To be brutally honest, there was damage. Beyond that we don’t know.”
Reuters New Service reported that in Alberta, where most canola has escaped frost, farmers are rushing to swath crops, gambling they’ll be better off with a slight reduction in yields and lower oil content than risking losing grades to frost.
“I think that people are panicking and saying, ‘God, I don’t want to be like Saskatchewan,’ ” Phil Thomas, a canola agronomist with the Agri-Trend Network, told Reuters.
If frost is forecast, more farmers will take a similar swathing strategy, although waterlogged fields may need three or four days of hot weather to dry enough to handle heavy equipment, specialists said.
A frost in early September would still damage a portion of the crop, Saskatchewan Agriculture’s Bill Greuel said.
“It probably wouldn’t contribute to any more yield loss, but it would still create quality problems in terms of high green seed,” he said.
