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Canadian crop production bounces back, StatCan reports

Wheat at higher end of trade projections

| 3 min read

By Adam Peleshaty

govt bldg winnipeg

File photo of a federal office building in downtown Winnipeg. (Dave Bedard photo)

MarketsFarm — After 2021’s historic drought on the Prairies caused crop production to fall to historic lows, the 2022 harvest has mostly bounced back to pre-drought levels, according to Statistics Canada.

StatCan on Monday released its July 2022 satellite image-based principal field crop production estimates, which confirmed analysts’ expectations that this year’s crop production would rise to more typical levels.

Jon Driedger, a Winnipeg-based trader and vice-president of Leftfield Commodity Research, said there were very few surprises in the report and production numbers were mostly in line with trade estimates.

“A lot of the numbers largely came in in line with what we expected,” he said. “In some ways, maybe wheat was a little bit above the average expectation and durum as well. You look at some others that were a touch low, such as oats and barley, but canola was very close to the trade estimate and almost spot on with our trade numbers.

“I think the numbers were, by and large, not shocking or surprising or caught anyone off guard.”

Canola production for the 2022-23 marketing year rose 41.7 per cent compared to the previous year at 19.5 million tonnes, midway through pre-report trade projections and slightly higher than the 2020-21 level of 19.485 million.

High prices gave further incentive for producers to grow the crop, but wet spring weather in the eastern Prairies caused seeding delays. The average yield for canola increased 47.8 per cent to 40.5 bushels per acre, not as high as the 41.8 bu./ac. in 2020.

All wheat production made a similar jump compared to 2021 numbers, rising 55.1 per cent to 34.57 million tonnes, which is at the higher end of trade projections, but just shy of the 35.44 million reported in 2020.

Spring wheat production increased by 57.3 per cent compared to last year to 25.57 million, while durum production nearly doubled at 6.47 million.

“By and large, the (production totals) came in as expected,” Driedger added, who himself had estimated canola and wheat production at 19.6 million and 35 million tonnes, respectively prior to the report. “There was nothing in these numbers that would cause us to change our opinion about what we think this crop looks like.”

Barley production jumped 34.3 per cent to 9.3 million tonnes, while oat production rose 59.2 per cent to 4.5 million. However, both figures were near the lower end of pre-report trade estimates and slightly lower than 2020 totals.

Canada’s lentil harvest reached its highest total since 2016 at 2.91 million tonnes, an 80.9 per cent jump from 2021 and a 1.32 per cent increase from 2020. Dry pea production was tabulated at 3.61 million tonnes, 59.9 per cent higher than last year, but 12.4 per cent lower than in 2020.

While it is very likely there will be sharp increases in Canadian crop production this year, many analysts were skeptical of StatCan’s estimates before the report was released. The data collected for the report was up to July 31, before hot and dry weather conditions descended onto Western Canada.

However, Driedger does not believe the August weather will further affect this year’s harvest.

“I don’t know that we’ve had the sorts of weather between then and today that would say something has dramatically changed,” he said. “I don’t know the weather was such that it would cause people to say this was a big miss because something dramatic happened weatherwise…In this particular case this year, I don’t know that the lag would have a huge impact.”

Table: A quick summary of Statistics Canada’s July model-based principal field crop production estimates for 2022-23, in millions of metric tonnes. Year-ago numbers and pre-report trade estimates are included for comparison.

Pre-report StatCan, Production,
trade estimates.     . July 2022.   . 2021-22
Durum 5.200 – 6.500 6.473 3.038
All wheat 31.600 – 35.000 34.572 22.296
Oats 4.400 – 4.700 4.471 2.808
Barley 9.100 – 10.500 9.346 6.959
Corn (grain).   . n/a 14.825 13.984
Canola 18.600 – 20.300 19.499 13.757
Soybeans n/a 6.382 6.272
Peas 3.400 – 3.450 3.610 2.258
Lentils 2.400 – 2.800 2.906 1.606
Flaxseed n/a 0.488 0.346