From 2013 to 2016, prairie farmers seeded 210,000 to 300,000 acres of rye in the fall, based on Statistics Canada data.
This year, the acreage will be much lower because growers were reluctant to seed the crop into dry or rock-hard soil in September.
“It’s definitely significantly down compared to last year just because of the fall that we had,” said Denise Schmidt, national sales manager with FP Genetics.
“We’re predicting somewhere about a quarter of the acres that normally go in the ground, of rye in general…. But we don’t have a firm number, as of yet.”
If the estimates are correct, fall rye acres on the Prairies could be 55,000 to 75,000, which would be one of smallest crops of fall rye in recent memory.
