WINNIPEG (Reuters) — Canadian farmers, still struggling to find buyers for their abundant harvest last year due to an overwhelmed transportation network, will plant more canola and less wheat this year, a market analyst said on Monday.
Farmers will plant 23.3 million acres of all-wheat, down 10 percent from last year, Jonathon Driedger, risk management portfolio manager at FarmLink Marketing Solutions, told the Wild Oats Grainworld conference in Winnipeg.
Driedger said excessively large supplies will cause farmers to shy away from wheat, but canola’s demand looks more positive once railway bottlenecks ease, he said.
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He forecast 21 million acres of canola seedings, up five percent.
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada last week forecast plantings of 24.7 million acres of all-wheat in 2014-15, down six percent. It said farmers may plant 21.6 million acres of canola, up eight percent from a year earlier due to attractive returns.
Record-large Canadian crops of wheat and canola, along with frigid temperatures, have overwhelmed Canadian National Railway Co. and Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd., resulting in a backlog of orders for tens of thousands of grain cars.
Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz told reporters at Grainworld ahead of a meeting with grain handlers and railways that he wants to see rail companies develop more surge capacity to handle big crops, including more access to locomotives and cars.
Ritz said he is not in favour of scrapping the grain revenue cap that Ottawa imposes on railways, but said the cap system needs changes.
