WINNIPEG — As the market grappled with the April 27 Statistics Canada planting projections, one thing was clear to MarketsFarm Pro analyst Mike Jubinville: the canola forecast isn’t enough to rectify tight ending stocks.
In the survey-based principal field crop areas report, the federal agency pegged 2021-22 canola acres at 21.53 million, up 3.6 percent from the estimated acres planted in 2020-21. Trade predictions obtained by MarketsFarm called for 21.5 million to 23.2 million acres of canola this year.
“You plug in a number like that into the supply and demand balance, and as tight as we are for ending stocks in this marketing year, that’s just not enough [canola] acres to satisfy what the market is going to want for next year,” Jubinville said.
“The tight stocks scenario for canola continues well into next year and maybe the year after that.”
Jubinville said Statistics Canada has likely understated the number of acres that will eventually be planted this spring.
“The message has to be sent loud and clear — we need more acres,” he said, noting a bullish result did not emerge from a bullish estimate. While old crop prices continued their upswing, new crop prices were lower.
“It just goes to show there are bigger global issues at work, and canola as well as Canada are simply followers of these big, epic tidal moves in the marketplace,” said Jubinville.
As for other crops, Statistics Canada called for total wheat acres to fall 6.9 percent in 2021-22 at 23.26 million. However, it bumped durum acre projections by nearly 0.3 percent at more than 5.7 million.
The federal agency pegged barley acres to increase 13.9 percent at 8.61 million and projected oat acres to slip from 3.84 million acres in 2020-21 to 3.61 million for 2021-22.
