The Liberal Party is putting some emphasis on policies for rural Canada. Earlier this week, leader Michael Ignatieff made a commitment to what he calls “Canada’s first National Food Policy.” While it’s heartening to see some attention being paid to agriculture, it’s obvious that the Liberals are going after seats in rural Ontario. They have a legitimate chance of winning some of those seats. The odds are stacked against them making many gains in the rural seats of Western Canada. Ignatieff’s National Food Policy announcement was made on a farm in King Township, Ontario. The policy includes a lot of emphasis on getting more home-grown food onto Canadian tables. This caters to the local food trend that’s important to a lot of Ontario producers. It isn’t such a big issue in the West where we live and die by the export market. The Liberals are also promising a program called AgriFlex to offer regionally flexible programs that help meet the cost of production. That’s a direct pitch to Ontario farm groups who have been pushing for just such an approach. I’m Kevin Hursh.
Canola seeding recommendations have changed over the years. Conventional wisdom was that you wanted to seed a little later in the spring so that emerging canola would be more likely to escape frost damage. In the 90s, conventional wisdom was challenged. It was found that canola could harden off and withstand a significant frost. In fact, there was work on seeding canola late in the fall so that it emerged very early. That worked well sometimes, but eventually the recommendation was developed to seed canola in the early spring. Trials conducted in a number of locations in the late 90s showed that in seven out of 10 cases, seeding as early as possible gave higher yields than the “normal” seeding date. Oil content was also higher. Over the past ten years, most observers have gone back to recommending a later seeding date. One of the reasons cited is that canola seedlings that don’t have cool temperatures prior to a frost may not sufficiently harden off for when a frost does occur. Of course, later seeding doesn’t provide a guarantee of no frost, but it does improve your odds. These days, you can find producers who seed their canola first, but for many others, canola goes in the ground a bit later. I’m Kevin Hursh.
There’s more and more market information available to grain, oilseed and specialty crop producers, but more information is not necessarily more knowledge. In the latest Pulse Market Report from Saskatchewan Pulse Growers, there’s detailed information on the lentil, pea and chickpea crops in Turkey and Australia. This is great market intelligence, but it’s tough for a grower in Western Canada to wade through that information and form any useful conclusions about price trends. You can also find snippets of information in marketing newsletters on what’s happening in various regions of India and China. When there’s an important policy change or when there’s a major production trend in these countries that’s useful, but often the information is hard to interpret. Even our own Statistics Canada seeding intentions numbers need to be put in perspective to have any value. Have you ever listened to a market outlook presentation and walked away not feeling much smarter? Obviously, the experts can also have trouble processing all the conflicting information. Information is good, but analysis of all the factors is what producers really need. Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for all the trees. I’m Kevin Hursh.
According to the Statistics Canada seeding intentions report released yesterday, there are some dramatically different seeding intentions between the three Prairie Provinces. On lentils, the increase in Saskatchewan is pegged at 16 per cent which would increase lentil acres to 2.7 million. This is far below trade estimates. The increase in Alberta is 200 per cent – a tripling of acres. This huge increase is possible because Alberta is starting at a miniscule level. Even after the 200 per cent increase, they’ll only be at 135,000 acres. On canola, Alberta acreage is expected to be up 2 percent, while the Saskatchewan increase is forecast at 9. In Manitoba, canola acreage is actually expected to be down slightly. The situation is reversed on field peas. Alberta acreage is forecast to be unchanged. Saskatchewan field pea acreage is down 6 per cent, while Manitoba pea acreage is up a whopping 41 per cent, albeit still a pretty small number. On other crops, there’s more agreement between the provinces. Flax is down 15 to 17 per cent in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Durum is down massively in Alberta (48 per cent) and Saskatchewan (32 per cent). In all three provinces, spring wheat is up a bit and barley is down a bit. I’m Kevin Hursh.
A couple weeks ago, many areas of the province were anticipating an early start to seeding. In fact, there could have been a lot more seeding done but producers held off because it was so early. Since then, we’ve had a major rainfall event and now we’re into damp, cool weather. There was snow over the weekend and showers and rain are in the forecast for the days ahead. It will be at least early May until a significant amount of seeding starts and for most eastern regions of the province it will be much later than that. It’s still early in the season, but producers are going to be anxious to make progress as soon as the weather allows. The warm weather in the first part of April warmed up the soil and spurred weed growth that requires attention. And the clock is ticking for producers who have a lot of ground to cover. Showery, cool weather could delay seeding and spraying without providing much in the way of meaningful precipitation. Or there could be significant amounts of precipitation causing longer delays. There are areas still short of soil moisture, but there are also areas dealing with excess moisture and they’d prefer not to see any more wet stuff for a while. I’m Kevin Hursh.