SASKATOON – Farmers should pay extra attention to extra strong wheat, says the Canadian Wheat Board.
The marketing agency is urging prairie farmers to seed at least as much as last year, when they planted 487,329 acres of Canadian Western extra strong (CWES) wheat.
“This year it is important that we have ample stocks to take advantage of our market development work and the sales opportunities that it has generated,” said Adrian Measner, the board’s executive director of marketing.
The board said in a press release CWES is proving popular in Southeast Asia and Latin America due to its strong gluten and unique flour characteristics.
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Customers like to blend it with lower protein hard red spring and weaker wheats and use it to improve the quality of frozen dough products. It’s also being used in some specialized markets like shrimp feed in Malaysia and Thailand.
The board said the economics of growing CWES this year look pretty good. The latest pool return outlook says CWES will fetch $170 to $180 a tonne in 1995-96, slightly less than CW red spring at $173 to $183 a tonne.
But given the roughly 20 percent yield advantage for CWES, the gross per acre return is actually higher.
So far this year the board has accepted 100 percent of CWES offered under series A, B and C contracts. Movement has been slow to date but the board says farmers will be able to deliver their entire contract before the end of the crop year.
Manitoba was the leading producer of CWES last year, seeding 267,350 acres. Saskat-chewan was next at 169,059 acres, followed by Alberta with 48,264 acres and British Columbia at 2,656 acres.
While the board’s press release talks about maintaining acreage in 1995, a spokesperson said that doesn’t mean farmers shouldn’t seed more than last year.
“We need to maintain acreage to meet our demand,” said Deanna Allen. “But certainly we wouldn’t discourage any increase above last year.”
