Saskatchewan Agriculture says the province’s canaryseed and mustard crops are much bigger than Statistics Canada is forecasting.
Analysts believe that in one case the province is right and in the other it is wrong.
In a recent crop report, the provincial government pegged average canaryseed yields at 1,099 pounds per acre and mustard yields at 1,119 lb. per acre.
The canaryseed estimate is 35 percent higher than Statistics Canada’s number and the mustard estimate is 53 percent bigger.
It would result in an extra 41,513 tonnes of canaryseed and 43,118 tonnes of mustard than Statistics Canada is forecasting.
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Kevin Hursh, executive director of the Canaryseed Development Commission of Saskatchewan and the Saskatchewan Mustard Development Commission, is inclined to put more faith in Saskatchewan Agriculture’s canaryseed number.
He said Statistics Canada’s survey was conducted Sept. 3-13, so it was already outdated by the time it was published Oct. 2 and likely didn’t include many of the 1,000 to 1,500 canaryseed and mustard growers.
As well, he said there is an even better reason to doubt the survey results.
“There is a tendency to lie to Stats Canada, and it probably is more prevalent in the specialty crops, in the crops where how much we produce matters to the price,” said Hursh.
Growers often understate their production of minor crops in the hopes of getting higher prices, but he believes buyers are not swayed by the misleading information and it makes it difficult for other special crop farmers to develop marketing strategies.
“I believe there’s value in good information,” said Hursh. “If you want to lie to StatsCan and then brag about it on coffee row, I guess it makes you a hero on coffee row amongst some people, but I don’t think it does anybody any good.”
Hursh said he doesn’t have any problem with Saskatchewan Agriculture’s canaryseed estimate of 1,099 lb. per acre, which is slightly higher than the previous 10-year average of 1,049 lb. per acre.
However, he is skeptical of the mustard estimate of 1,119 lb. per acre, which is much higher than the 10-year average of 802 lb. per acre.
Walter Dyck, seed division manager for Olds Products, the largest private label mustard manufacturer in North America, is siding with Statistics Canada’s lower mustard estimate.
He said yellow mustard, which comprises 70 percent of the crop, will average 700 lb. per acre and brown mustard will yield 900 lb. per acre, based on harvest samples he has seen.
It means yellow mustard will be in short supply because it typically averages 750 to 800 lb. per acre. Growers planted an estimated 325,000 acres of mustard this year, which is below the usual 350,000 to 400,000 acres.
“There may be enough (production) but it’s tight, so everyone is just kind of scrambling,” said Dyck.
Tight supplies drove spot yellow mustard prices to 50 cents per lb. last week, which is at the historically high end of its trading range. Oriental mustard bids were around 45 cents and brown mustard was fetching 32 or 33 cents.
New crop yellow mustard bids for 45 cents a lb. were available last week.
“Companies are just covering their short position, is what they’re doing,” said Dyck.
He thinks prices will remain high because buyers will need 400,000 acres of the crop next year to re-plenish supplies, but he doesn’t think they will match the highs of 70 cents achieved in 2001-02 when Canada had low carryout, small acreage and poor yields and Ukraine had a disappointing crop.
Russia and Ukraine had good carryout heading into this year and produced big crops, so they have enough mustard to supply Western Europe and perhaps some North American demand. That should keep a lid on prices.
Hursh said it was a difficult year to be a mustard and canaryseed grower in west-central Saskatchewan.
He contemplated asking crop insurance officials to visit his farm to look at terminating his mustard crop at one point during the growing season.
“I was ready to write it off in June, actually, because the germination was so terrible it didn’t even look like a crop,” he said.
However, rain gradually came and the crop filled in a bit. It ended up yielding 700 lb. per acre and became one of the best contributors to his bottom line, despite brown mustard being the lowest priced of the three mustard types.
It was a similar story with his canaryseed crop, which looked abysmal until rain came in July and caused re-growth. The crop was extremely late, but frost stayed away.
“We finally swathed it. I haven’t swathed canaryseed in years. We swathed it all down, waited another week or two and it was combinable,” said Hursh.
“It’s a puny crop, only about 14 bushels an acre, but it was better than the crop I expected back in July or back even in August.”
