The Statistics Canada numbers are startling. Rarely are acreage shifts so dramatic from one year to the next.
Lentils everywhere. That’s what you see in Saskatchewan’s southern grain belt where lentils have become the dominant crop.
The latest numbers are even more extreme than earlier estimates: a 48 percent increase. And this is on top of the previous year’s 27 percent jump.
At 5.84 million acres, lentils cover nearly as much area in Western Canada as durum (6.1 million) and barley (6.385 million).
Saskatchewan has 5.3 million of the lentil acres, which is bigger than the province’s durum acreage (five million) and twice as big as the barley area. It’s quite a feat for a crop that’s best adapted to the brown and dark brown soil zones.
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Spring wheat in Saskatchewan has declined to only 6.9 million acres. While canola is king in the province at 10.9 million acres, it’s amazing that lentils now cover more than half the area devoted to the Cinderella crop.
Alberta has more than doubled its lentil acreage this year, but the province still has only 565,000 acres. With their reluctance to embrace lentils, Alberta farmers turned heavily to field peas, increasing acreage by nearly 29 percent and generating a third consecutive record area (1.9 million acres).
In Saskatchewan, field pea acreage went up only three percent to 2.2 million. This is almost a million acres below the record set back in 2008. Saskatchewan has become lentil country, limiting field pea acreage despite strong pea prices.
Meanwhile, flax in Western Canada has seen a precipitous decline of nearly 44 percent, a victim of softer prices and often disappointing yields. Flax acres had been increasing the past several years.
Manitoba continues to love soybeans. This is the ninth consecutive increase, up 17 percent to 1.6 million acres. However, the love affair does not continue very far into neighbouring Saskatchewan, where acreage has slipped from 270,000 to 235,000.
Grain corn in Manitoba has gone from 250,000 acres last year to 325,000 this year. Statistics Canada does not report corn acreage in Saskatchewan. In Alberta, corn acreage has slipped from 40,000 to 25,000.
Major seed companies have been predicting millions more acres of soybeans and corn across the West. So far, the advance has stalled in Manitoba.
In the smaller acreage crops, mustard is up 52 percent, but this comes after a 31 percent drop last year. At 525,000 acres, mustard is only 25,000 acres higher than the 2014 level. Nearly 75 percent of the mustard acres are in Saskatchewan. Acreage in Alberta is dominated by the yellow type. This year’s increases are in yellow and oriental, with brown mustard actually dropping.
Canaryseed is down 20 percent to 260,000 acres, but it was up 18 percent last year. Once a speculative crop with large price swings that depended on the size of the Sask-atchewan crop, canaryseed has traded in a relatively tight price range for many years.
Of all the crops, the biggest game changer is lentils.
Given the volume of production, we could see the best prices early in the harvest season, which would create a rush to sell the crop as soon as possible. If that happens, it will be a buyer’s market.
