WINNIPEG — As canola futures prices continue to climb, so do the estimates of acreage for this spring.
Last week, nearby contracts gained another $23 per tonne, climbing to the $444 per tonne level. New-crop prices topped $353 per tonne late in the week.
It had some analysts predicting 14 million acres — or more — of canola this year, a whopping 40 percent increase on last year’s record 10.2 million acres.
The analysts making those projections haven’t talked to farmers like Swift Current’s Larry Hill.
Like a lot of farmers, Hill joined the ranks of canola growers for the first time last year. They collectively stretched the so-called canola belt into drier areas of the Prairies where it’s never really been tried before.
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Hill said it was a good experience. He sold the production from the 80 acres he grew for $1.60 per bushel more than he had budgeted to get.
He also learned to appreciate what it means to have a cash crop: “It never really sinks in until you do it.
“But canola wasn’t our best crop,” he said.
High prices, short supply
Hill is in an area that consistently produces malting barley and high quality durum — both of which are fetching premium prices because of supply shortages. That figures heavily into his plans for next year. Hill has experience growing 60-bu. malting barley and 50-bu. per acre durum.
“If durum’s going to be worth more than $4 per bu., it’s a pretty good bet for us,” he said.
His first effort at growing canola yielded 25 bu. per acre and sold for $6.60 for a gross return of $165 per acre.
There’s also the issue of marketing. Hill is new to the open market and it makes him a little uncomfortable.
“It’s just plain different,” he said. “Personally, my tendency is to be price pooling and taking the average price.”
Taking all of those factors into consideration, Hill says he plans to be cautious — “I’m going to plant it and keep learning about it.”
But he won’t be expanding his canola acreage.
Hill is just one farmer. But his logic seems in tune with National Grains Bureau acreage estimates released in December.
The bureau is predicting durum acreage on the Prairies will increase 23 percent to 4.4 million acres. It says canola acres will increase about two percent to 10.5 million acres, an increase that will come at the expense of barley.
