How do you peg a crop that’s good, bad, seeded, unseeded, late and early?
That’s the conundrum confronting the oats industry as it sorts through the wildly varying conditions facing prairie farmers.
It’s true for many crops growing on the Prairies, but the question is especially relevant for the oats industry, which is almost totally dependent on production from the Canadian Prairies.
It’s also important for makers of oat products because the oat carryout in 2011-12 is forecast to fall perilously low.
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“2011-12 Canadian oat end stocks could fall to near record low,” says the lead headline in the June 19OatInsightnewsletter.
Assessing the size and quality of oat crops will be a problem for the industry through much of the 2011 growing season because oats are grown in a long band that crosses many regions but are generally ignored in big crop forecasts.
“It makes for a summer of debate over what the acres are between buyers and millers,” said Terry Tyson, an oat buyer for Grain Millers in Yorkton, Sask.
“To what extent we’ve lost acres, I don’t know yet.”
Last year was disastrous for oats production in the Yorkton area, with saturation robbing acres from farmers and bad conditions ruining many crops that were planted.
But this year, that area has some of the best-looking crops.
Southeastern Saskatchewan and southwestern Manitoba have some of the worst results, with few acres planted and not much looking good. It’s hard to know how much of the area was seeded to oats as the seeding window closes.
Farmers generally managed to seed 25 percent, but that doesn’t apply to every crop.
“Oats wasn’t the focal point of anyone early on, so you’d have to guess that less than 25 percent of the intended acreage got sown,” said Tyson.
“A lot of guys end with oats, but this year, if a guy couldn’t get onto his canola fields, he moved on to other (fields that were seedable), and that could mean oats.”
Oats are a frost-hardy crop and might get a few of the last acres that a farmer can seed before it’s too late for the 2011 crop. However, the lateness concerns haunting the Prairies remain a worry.
Oats will survive frost, but it damages the groats and may downgrade the crop beneath food grade.
OatInsightis estimating that no more than 3.3 million acres will be seeded this season, which is only 16 percent more than last year and not enough to fill in the loss of production caused by last year’s abysmal weather.
The five year average for Canadian acreage is 3.9 million.
Western Canadian area likely will be 2.9 million acres, which is close to the record low of 2.5 million acres, even though farmers in March intended to boost acres.
“What is very clear at this point is any analysis or forecast of 2011 seeded oat acres or production is anything but certain,” said theOatInsightnewsletter.
“There are far too many unknowns.”
VANCOUVER – The federal NDP’s prairie beginnings seemed like old news at the party’s recent national convention.
Delegates met in Vancouver’s posh new, ocean front convention centre with dreams of forming the next government, and where just as much French as English was spoken.
While Tommy Douglas was mentioned often, prairie issues received short shrift at the three-day convention, which celebrated the party’s 50th anniversary and its unexpected 103-seat win in May’s federal election.
There were resolutions concerning the Canadian Wheat Board, supporting the family farm and ensuring food security, but much of the debate centred on removing the word “socialism” from the party’s constitution, the role of Canada in Libya and strengthening Canada’s pension plan.
NDP leader Jack Layton said the party’s Saskatchewan roots have not been forgotten.
“We don’t want to abandon what got us here,” said Layton.
Instead, he said, “the spirit of working together” is needed to bring the to the next level.
His party has only one MP from Alberta, two in Manitoba and none in Saskatchewan, but Layton wasn’t worried that the 59 Quebec MPs, who make up more than half of his 103-person caucus, will take over the 50-year-old party.
Layton stressed that the 1,560 delegates at the convention represent Canadians from across the country and not just one area.
“When I look at this caucus, I see the face of Canada and the future of our country,” Layton said.
He was particularly buoyed by the number of young people at the convention, as well as the Quebec contingent, many of them young.
Rookie NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice said the NDP tried for years to reach Quebeckers and it’s finally happened.
“It’s a thrill. Wow,” said Boulerice, a former journalist and adviser to the Canadian Union of Public Employees who now represents the Montreal riding of Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie.
The priority now for what Layton calls his “government-in-waiting” is to take on the Conservatives.
“Why take us seriously?,” he said.
“We’re the official opposition. We’ll not only criticize the government. We’re the government-in-waiting.”
Delegates from across the country voiced the same sentiment.
Shannon Phillips, a delegate from Lethbridge, said the Liberals have been written off as a threat and the NDP is well-positioned to form the next government as it moves to attract more voters with policies that address social programs, health care and the environment.
She said the NDP may have elected only one MP in Alberta, but it did capture 25 percent of the vote in the province.
FOR MORE FROM THE CONVENTION, SEE PAGE 68.
Where the delegates came from:
B.C.: 660 Alberta: 84
Saskatchewan: 60 Manitoba: 56 Ontario: 449 Quebec: 183
New Brunswick: 14 Nova Scotia: 28 P.E. I: 3
Newfoundland &Labrador: 7 N.W. T: 6 Yukon: 6
Total:1,556
