By Rod Nickel
WINNIPEG, Manitoba, June 29 – Canadian farmers expanded canola plantings this spring to money in on record-high costs, a authorities report confirmed on Tuesday, however Prairie drought threatens to scorch crops.
Surging demand for vegetable oil, utilized in cooking, and meal, an animal feed additive, sparked a world oilseed value rally this yr, together with canola. Provide seems to be unsure, nonetheless, as excessive temperatures and dry soils sluggish crop progress.
A lot of Manitoba’s farm area is in excessive drought, with Saskatchewan principally seeing average to extreme drought, in line with the federal authorities’s Canadian Drought Monitor.
Circumstances at Invoice Campbell’s Minto, Manitoba, farm are the driest since 1988, he mentioned. Canola, oat and corn crops are discolored, and leaves are curling, signifying plant stress, with temperatures forecast to soar this week.
“Crops are for essentially the most half getting by, however we’re working daily, or week to week, on moisture,” mentioned Campbell, president of the Keystone Agricultural Producers farmer group.
“We don’t have the moisture to maintain these sort of warmth waves,” he mentioned.
Canada is the world’s greatest producer and exporter of canola, a cousin of rapeseed, and a significant wheat provider.
Canola plantings reached 22.5 million acres, Statistics Canada mentioned, up 1 million acres from the company’s April estimate of seeding intentions and up 8% from final yr.
Statscan’s estimate, which symbolize the most important canola plantings in three years, matched the typical commerce guess.
Statscan pegged all-wheat plantings at 23.four million acres, barely greater than the 23.three million within the April report and down 6.5% from a yr in the past.
With dry situations stunting canola and wheat on the Prairies and in North Dakota, provides look to run skinny of each crops throughout the subsequent yr, mentioned Lawrence Klusa, president of Seges Markets, an agriculture consultancy.
ICE Canada November canola futures RSX1 had been little modified after the report, climbing 5% on warmth wave issues.
(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, modifying by Louise Heavens)
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