You know it is time to come up with a new strategic plan for flax when growers say they intend to cut their acres by one-third.
Farmers told Statistics Canada they would plant 1.12 million acres of the oilseed in 2016, a 32 percent decline from last year. That is the biggest percentage drop of any of the principal crops.
“Everybody looked at it and said, ‘Wow, look at flax. It may be going nowhere,’” said Don Kerr, president of the Flax Council of Canada.
“I just wanted to put out a different perspective on that in that there are things going on in flax. We’re not dead yet. We’ve been around 5,000 years and we’re going to continue being around.”
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The industry has developed a strategic plan to reverse the waning fortunes of the crop. The plan is to increase average flax yields five bushels per acre by 2020 and 10 bushels per acre by 2025.
Six of the 10-bushel increase will be accomplished by communicating evolving best management practices.
Kerr said there are a number of promising flax agronomy research initiatives underway that should generate useful data for growers.
That data will be disseminated by the council’s newly hired extension agronomist through extension meetings, field days, one-on-one agronomy discussions and social media.
Another two bushel per acre increase will be achieved by conventional breeding research. The council wants to stabilize and maintain the one remaining flax breeding program in Canada, which is Helen Booker’s program out of the University of Saskatchewan’s Crop Development Centre.
The final two bushels will come through the new field of gene editing. The first example of that is expected to be Cibus’s herbicide tolerant flax, which is expected to be commercialized in Canada in 2020.
Chuck Penner, analyst with LeftField Commodity Research, thinks the yield goals are attainable because many farmers are already consistently achieving 25 to 30 bushels per acre by employing best management practices.
“While extracting more yield from flax is a little tougher than some other crops, I think that is quite doable,” he said.
The council expects flax plantings to reach 2.1 million acres by 2025, up from 1.7 million acres in 2015, while production will be 1.7 million tonnes, up from one million tonnes last year.
Penner is more skeptical about the acreage goal because canola, pulse and other commodity groups are all forecasting increased plantings for their crops.
“They can’t all win because there’s only a finite amount of acres,” he said.
Exports are forecast to double to 1.4 million tonnes over the next 10 years.
“It’s a very ambitious target. Absolutely,” said Kerr.
“But is it a target that is out of reach or out of the question? No it’s not. I think it’s reasonable.”
China is expected to lead the way with 550,000 tonnes of imports in 2025, up from 353,000 tonnes in 2015.
“To look at a growth in China of where we are projecting is not out of the question at all,” he said.
Kerr said Chinese feed manufacturers are keen on using the crop in rations.
The European Union is forecast to be in a tie for second, importing 300,000 tonnes of Canadian flax, up from 156,000 tonnes last year.
The projected growth in that market is predicated on the EU adopting a low level presence policy for GM contamination, which would allow Canadian flax to be used for food purposes.
“We’d certainly welcome the opportunity to compete with Kazakhstan,” he said.
The “other” category is also expected to be importing 300,000 tonnes, up from 49,000 tonnes.
That 500 percent increase would mostly come from new business to India, which doesn’t buy any flax today.
The council believes India is a good target market. It has a large vegetarian population. Flax is well suited to the meals consumed by those Hindu and Muslim vegetarians. And India is facing similar health issues as other countries where flax is proving beneficial.
Sales to the United States are forecast to increase to 250,000 tonnes from 150,000 tonnes.
Kerr said the council has been focusing its marketing efforts the past few years on the food market due to the recent health claim. While that will remain a focus, he wants to expand the marketing efforts to include feed and industrial markets.
Penner didn’t have much of an issue with any of the export targets.
“The only fly in the ointment I guess is that compared to a few years ago countries like Russia and Kazakhstan are bigger competitors,” he said.
