Wanna know what the prairie crop looked like a month ago?
Then go look at today’s Statistics Canada crop production report. Wanna know what the prairie crop looks like today? Chuck the report in the recycling bin and make some calls, because this thing’s as outdated as Mash re-runs.
That’s not Stats Can’s fault: they are diligent and put their reports together carefully. (I noted with some amusement this morning that one U.S. marketwatcher described Stats Can as taking “even longer” than USDA in putting together reports. Outside the U.S., the USDA is considered by most to do a great job at getting good reports out fast.) Unfortunately that often makes Stats Can crop production reports useless, especially when growing and harvesting conditions change radically, as they have done since the survey for the report was completed in early September. We had weeks of rain, bad frosts, and harvest progress in some areas. Now we’ve just had a week of fantastic harvest weather in many regions. So what’s out there today is likely quite different from what was there four or five weeks ago.
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Worrisome drop in grain prices
Prices had been softening for most of the previous month, but heading into the Labour Day long weekend, the price drops were startling.
What it is is anyone’s guess, and everyone’s guessing right now. Quality, rather than quantity, is the big question, so that will take weeks or a couple of months to figure out. It’s a bin by bin thing and will only be able to be assessed once enough eyes look at enough loads to get a sense of what’s out there.
But if you noticed that the markets haven’t reacted radically to today’s report, just remember this report is mainly only useful now for historical reasons, and we present-living people are more interested in things that give us some sense of things to come. And this report doesn’t have that.
