Crops better than expected
They say that if you don’t like the weather on the Prairies, come back in five minutes.
The same could be said of yield expectations this summer. Everyone was concerned in August when heat and lack of rain shrivelled crops in many places. Now, United Grain Growers’ Marketing Services’ September elevator manager survey shows yields for wheat, barley and canola turned out better than expected.
Although there are pockets of disappointment, yields are better than anticipated and crop quality is good.
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The story seems to be the same Down Under. A few weeks ago, the Australian Wheat Board dropped its wheat production forecast to 15 million tonnes due to dry weather. Now, after as much as 50 millimetres of rain in some areas, the board has boosted its production forecast to 15.5 to 16 million tonnes and the private trade estimates the crop at 17 million tonnes.
However, harvest is a month away yet. “Good soaking rains are required over the bulk of the grain belt in October to enable crops to proceed through sensitive grain-filling growth stages without additional problems,” the board said in its weekly market report Oct. 3.
This news, coupled with excellent seeding weather in the U.S. winter wheat growing area, has set up a situation for eroding wheat prices.
That is, until the weather changes. And with El Nino playing tricks, nothing is certain.
Lentils in a slump
Lentil prices probably won’t improve until we grow fewer acres.
Ken Hooper, head of Hooper Grain in Winnipeg, has an interesting column in the September Saskatchewan Pulse Grower.
He argues that prairie farmers have been too successful at adopting a new crop. In the past 20 years, they have moved from tentative experimentation with lentils to world market dominance.
But in the last three years, the Prairies have seeded more lentils than what the market will buy at a reasonable price for the grower.
In October 1995 the top price for Lairds was about 25 cents a pound, in October 1996, 21 cents, and today about 14.5 cents.
Hooper notes world trade in most years is around 350,000 tonnes. Western Canada has produced more than 340,000 tonnes in each of the last three years.
To get the price up, he says, growers here will have to scale back production to about 600,000 acres from more than 700,000.
However, that’s green seed varieties. Plant breeders are introducing red seeded types and given that world demand for this class of lentil is much greater, it seems the sky is the limit.
