Statistics Canada’s March seeding intentions survey prompted the usual analysis and market adjustment.
But it is interesting to stand back from the standard comparison to last year or a five-year average and see how much farmers’ seeding plans have changed over a longer period.
It wasn’t that long ago that western Canadian fields looked much different than they will this year.
At 18.2 million acres, this year’s intended spring wheat seeded area in Canada is the smallest since 1972, when it was 17.8 million and still recovering from the 1970 Lower Inventories for Tomorrow program, when only 12.5 million acres of wheat were harvested in Canada.
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The yield estimates for wheat and soybeans were neutral to bullish, but these were largely a sideshow when compared with corn.
But between the two lows, wheat saw some spectacular acreages.
In 1991, western Canadian spring wheat area was 30.06 million acres. This year’s 17.9 million acres marks a 40 percent decline.
What other changes have happened in the last 15 years? There is half the summerfallow area.
This year’s intended summerfallow area is 9.66 million acres, a rare increase over the year before, probably reflecting farm income problems and the lack of profitable cropping choices this year. Often, farmers wind up with fewer summerfallow acres than they intended in March, putting in a few more acres of crop in the hope of increasing revenue.
However, the trend over the past 15 years is for reduced summerfallow.
In 1991, the Prairies had 19.96 million acres of summerfallow, 10 million more acres than this year.
What replaced these wheat and summerfallow acres?
Barley, oats, flax and rye acreages have all had their ups and downs over the decade and a half and no sustained general trend has developed. However, thanks to big jumps last year and this year, oat area will be the highest since the early 1960s. Also, flax area, at 2.15 million acres this year, will be close to the top end of the seeding range, thanks to strong prices last year that caught farmers’ interest. In 1991 they seeded only 985,000 acres.
Canola was already well established 15 years ago at eight million acres, but has steadily moved on to a new level of magnitude and this year almost 12 million acres are expected to go into the ground, an increase of about four million from 1991.
Pulse crops were just coming on the scene 15 years ago, but have since soared. This year peas, lentils and beans are expected to be seeded on close to 5.6 million acres.
Specialty crops such as mustard, canaryseed, sunflowers and buckwheat will total another million acres or so in 2005, while corn and soybeans are starting to make inroads, especially in Manitoba.
Reflecting growing cattle production, tame hay area has also increased over the past 15 years.
All this shows that prairie farmers are much more diversified in the crops they grow than they were 15 years ago.
It also shows that the adoption of direct seeding and more sophisticated rotations have allowed producers to make more effective use of their land.
Finally, it shows that wheat production has shifted outside of Canada and United States, which has also been posting some of the smallest wheat acreages since the early 1970s. Australia and Argentina have mostly filled the hole.
