Winter cereal production fell in Saskatchewan last year because of the weather, dropping to little more than 147,000 acres from almost 230,000 acres in 2003.
But that is not an accurate picture of the overall trend, says Bob Linnell, executive manager of Winter Cereals Canada.
“Winter wheat production has been around 700,000 acres, spread across three prairie provinces,” Linnell said.
“On the whole, over the last six years or so, there has been a steady increase of 10 to 18 percent in acreage.”
He said producers with higher acreages tend to look at spreading out their workload and winter wheat allows them to do that.
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“They are able to seed in the fall, roughly at the time they are starting to harvest their spring-seeded crops,” he said.
“The next year, the winter wheat is harvested about a month ahead of any spring-seeded crop. It also has an effect on bin storage.
“If you get winter wheat in a bin a month ahead of your spring-seeded crop, you can often empty it out and re-use that bin. In other words, you are doing two turns on that individual bin.”
He said the livestock industry is a good market for winter wheat.
“We see growth in the area of feeding hogs and livestock Ñ hogs particularly Ñ because it is a high energy crop and they can adjust the energy on other things,” he said.
“Hog feeders and hog feeding mills really like the product. Often hog feeders will contract winter wheat producers because they want a continuous feed stock supply.”
The cattle business is also a potential market, but not as attractive as hogs.
“Cattle feeders buy in bulk because of the quantity they need: so many tons, what is your best price per ton?”
Linnell said ethanol production is another potentially large market.
“Winter wheat is the preferred feed stock for ethanol production because of the productive capacity.
“The key right now is to produce bushels and if you can do that at a lower cost of inputs, that’s the name of the game.”
