It appears that Manitoba farmers seeded more than one million acres of soybeans this year.
Manitoba Agricultural Services Corp., the provincial crop insurer, is projecting 1.08 million acres of soybeans for the province in 2013.
With 97 percent of the data reported as of late July, there were 1.048 million acres of insured soybeans in the province, said Doug Wilcox, MASC manager of program development for insurance.
“If you add three percent to that, it becomes 1.08 million,” he said.
The MASC figures are almost identical to Statistics Canada projections from June, which estimated Manitoba soybeans at 1.085 million acres.
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It means more soybeans are now grown in Manitoba than oats, barley and flax combined. The bean acreage is another record for Manitoba and a 28 percent increase from last year, when growers insured 844,660 acres.
Most industry watchers were expecting 900,000 to 950,000 soybean acres in Manitoba a month ago, so the 1.08 million figure is surprising.
“In certain areas, seeding intentions were reduced because the crop insurance deadline came and it was (still) wet… such as the southwest corner,” said Roxanne Lewko, executive director of Manitoba Pulse Growers. “We must of made up for those acres in other areas, where maybe the seeding intentions were increased in the last minute.”
Producers and industry representatives have talked for more than a year about the possibility of one million bean acres. Lewko said exceeding the threshold is symbolic but also leads to a few questions.
“Is that where we’re going to be, at a minimum, from now on? Are we going to see a million acres each year? Is that our new baseline?”
Grain corn will also set a new Manitoba record this year.
Growers seeded 342,593 acres this spring, based on MASC projections. It represents a 25 percent increase from last year, when producers seeded 270,000 acres of grain corn.
Lorne Loeppky, who farms near Niverville, Man, said there is definitely more corn on the landscape in eastern Manitoba.
“In our part of the world, we have quite a few new producers, and (also) people who tried it for the first time last year are growing considerably more acres (this year),” said Loeppky, who seeds 1,000 to 1,200 acres of corn.
“I would attribute most of that to the kicking that guys took last year in canola, and the fusarium problems we face with cereal crops.”
While corn and soybeans continue to expand, flax acres dropped to a new low. MASC will insure 74,000 acres this year.
It is lower than the Statistics Canada projection of 85,000 acres and industry expectations of 150,000 acres.
Only a decade ago, Manitoba producers regularly seeded more than 350,000 acres of flax.
Manitoba Flax Growers Association chair Erid Fridfinnson said there’s no doubt that corn and soybeans are eating into flax acres, but this year it was primarily wet conditions in southwestern Manitoba that cut into flax acreage.
“There was quite a bit of unseeded acreage in that part of the province,” he said.
“That’s really where the bigger part of the flax crop has been grown.”
