Millions of wheat acres may go unplanted in Canada
Farm and Ranch June 15, 2010 U.S. wheat prices, particularly Minneapolis spring wheat futures, have benefited the past few days from weather problems in western Canada where exceptional spring rainfall is expected to mean millions of acres will go unseeded to spring cereal crops. Bruce Burnett, the Canadian Wheat Board’s director of weather and market analysis, says planted wheat area is forecast to be the smallest since 1971 with barley plantings the smallest since 1965. Burnett: “Unseeded area in Western Canada we place currently at about eight million acres. The range we have is eight to 12 million acres of abandonment. I would like to be more precise but at this time I don‘t think you can be more precise. It certainly wouldn‘t surprise me to see unplanted acres of 12 million acres at this point in time.” Western Canada’s all wheat acreage is expected to be down 18 percent from last year. Durum acreage down 39 percent with barley acreage off 20 percent from 2009. Canada’s spring wheat production is pegged by the Wheat Board at 14.8 million tons, which compares to 17.8 million last year. Across the Canadian Prairies 78 percent of the planting of major crops is complete when normally all planting would be done by now. I’m Bob Hoff and that’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on Northwest Aginfo Net. ? ?
