Pulse crop prognosticators have been trying to guess the size of the coming lentil crop since the Pulse Days convention in Saskatoon in January, but no one predicted what farmers have just told them.
According to Statistics Canada’s March seeding intentions report released April 23, Saskatchewan lentil farmers are going to plant a 26 percent bigger crop than last year.
The number shocked many pulse experts, including Saskatchewan Agriculture special crops specialist Ray McVicar, whose department issued a much smaller estimate one week earlier.
“I would be surprised to see that many lentils in the ground,” he said.
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Stat Publishing analyst Brian Clancey said the federal agency’s number “exceeded industry expectations by a wide margin,” with trade forecasts ranging from no growth to 10 percent larger than 2003.
In Statistics Canada’s survey of 11,850 farms conducted during the last week of March, producers in Saskatchewan, where 99 percent of last year’s lentil crop was seeded, indicated they plan to grow 1.7 million acres of the crop, up from 1.35 million acres in 2003.
That flies in the face of Saskatchewan Agriculture’s April 18 survey of a few hundred crop reporters, which resulted in a more conservative estimate of 1.39 million acres, a three percent increase over last year’s plantings.
Terry Bedard of Saskatchewan Agriculture said one explanation for the 310,000-acre disparity could be the three-week gap between the two surveys. Another is that the Saskatchewan survey traditionally low balls the numbers.
“Ours tends to be conservative. It just always has been.”
Saskatoon commodity broker Larry Weber came up with an estimate at Pulse Days that was close to the federal government’s forecast, but by mid-April had cut his prediction of a 20 percent increase almost in half to 11 percent.
“When I saw the crop insurance (premiums) come out I thought that we weren’t going to be as high,” he said.
Weber believes the numberin the StatsCan report was a reaction to a lentil price spike that occurred early in the year.
“You can lock in some pretty decent fall bids. I think that’s probably the biggest reason (for the increase).”
McVicar agreed strong prices have created a sense of lentil optimism, but thinks the magnitude of that euphoria was overstated in the Statistics Canada report.
When the agency comes out with its actual seeded acreage numbers in June, he thinks the increase will be closer to five percent because many producers in west-central Saskatchewan, which is the prime lentil-growing area, could be facing severe grasshopper infestations.
Even if there is a 26 percent jump in lentil plantings, there is a good chance, given recent crop history and current soil conditions, that there won’t be an equivalent increase in production.
“The way it looks right now there is concern we won’t get average yields,” McVicar said.
Whatever the growth rate is, it will likely occur in reds and large greens because those are the classes of lentils that buyers desire. Large greens accounted for 54 percent of the 2003 crop, followed by reds at 20 percent and small greens at 11 percent.
McVicar doesn’t anticipate seed supply shortfalls due to last year’s sizeable harvest, but tests have shown there may be a vigour problem with some of the available stock.
“Other than that, the seed is excellent. There is very, very low disease levels and much, much nicer quality this year than we’ve had for a number of years.”
