Clues to prairie seeding intentions are found in the samples that seed companies receive in the winter.
Bruce Carriere of Discovery Seed Labs in Saskatoon has some ideas about what farmers are planning to put in the ground in 2009, ahead of the annual March Statistics Canada seeding intentions report.
“We see what producers are thinking about in advance of fertilizer, crop insurance or any other decision … it starts with seed,” he told the Saskatchewan Seed Growers’ Association at its annual meeting Jan. 14 during Crop Production Week in Saskatoon.
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Seed samples from both seed growers and primary commercial producers flow into Carriere’s lab and others in Western Canada beginning late in the fall and stretching into the spring seeding window itself.
Producers tend to test only what they plan to grow or sell as seed, so this becomes a measure of planting intensions.
According to this measure, prairie grain farmers will put more red lentils in the ground.
“We began seeing this trend early on,” he told seed growers. “Green lentils will likely be flat. No increase or decrease,” said Carriere.
There will likely be more oats going in the ground this year. Good prices and the need for a cereal cash crop will likely push the acres up.
Carriere said farmers are testing bagged leftovers from previous seasons as well as new-crop oats.
Barley, too, will be up, but only slightly.
Where will these new increases come from?
Canola.
Record canola production in 2008 saw 15.6 million acres in the ground. But a combination of rotational realities and lower prices are pushing growers away from the oilseed this season.
