Canadian farmers are likely to produce average-size wheat and canola crops this autumn, but years of drought have made rain critical for the plants to fulfill their potential, farmers and analysts said this week at the Ag in Motion farm show.
In eastern Saskatchewan, Robert Andjelic, a major Canadian farmland investor, said he was seeing lush, dense crops of spring wheat and canola in perfect condition. In southwestern Saskatchewan, however, he described spring wheat dying under the pressure of extreme drought.
Across Western Canada, he saw a wide range of "terrible" to "terrific" crops, he said.
"It's such a mixed bag," he said while touring some of the more than 225,000 acres (91,000 hectares) he owns across the prairie provinces.
Canada is the world's largest exporter of canola, durum wheat, and some pulse crops such as lentils, with China, the United States, Japan, Mexico, North Africa, and India among its largest buyers. Its spring wheat crop is vital to millers around the globe, and U.S. grocery shelf staples such as Cheerios cereal and Quaker oatmeal rely on Canadian oats.
Analysts and farmers interviewed by Reuters said they expect the country's total crop output to be about the same as last year, when farmers also endured a wide range of conditions, but still produced one of Canada's biggest crops ever.
While that probably means Canada's canola and spring wheat production will be about the same as last year, when farmers produced average-sized harvests, the outlook is worse for durum wheat and lentils, which farmers grow in some of the areas hit by extreme dryness.
"They have been under these conditions too long," crop analyst Bruce Burnett of MarketsFarm said about some durum and lentil crops in the southwestern Prairies, adding that some were being baled for livestock feed.
Farmers said cereal grains such as wheat and durum were developing far fewer kernels per plant because of drought in some areas, resulting in lower yields.
Burnett estimates Canadian durum yield will be less than last year's 34 bushels per acre, which was an average yield.
Most farmers need at least one more significant rainfall for grain kernels to fill out, farmers and analysts said.
Burnett said canola crops were benefiting from cooler weather this July than last year, when scorching heat damaged millions of acres that were in the crucial flowering stage. Smoky air from forest fires was making the sunlight less direct and harsh, he said.
The oilseed is crushed mainly to produce vegetable oil and animal feed.
Statistics Canada is scheduled to issue its first crop production estimates of the year on August 28.
Farmer adviser Rob Saik, who drove across central Alberta and Saskatchewan to the farm show, said some parts of the Prairies were producing durum, lentils, and canola hammered by drought, but in most places, "we're in pretty good shape."
