Farmscape for June 17, 2015

A weather and crop specialist with CWB reports farmers across western Canada have planted more barley, durum wheat and pulse crops this year and less spring wheat and canola.
As a result of the dry weather spring planting across western Canada got off to a relatively early start this year, and in many cases, farmers wrapped up seeding 2 to 3 weeks ahead of last year.
Bruce Burnett, a weather and crop specialist with CWB, reports, with the exception of some green feed crops being seeded into some of the wetter areas, planting across the prairies is now complete.

Clip-Bruce Burnett-CWB:
Farmers essentially are planting more barley this year, more durum wheat, less spring wheat and less canola this year.
Strong pulse prices have also resulted in a significant increase in acreage of pulse crops.
The main factors influencing the decisions this year were essentially the prices.
We've seen the price drop for many commodities and that's influenced farmers' planting decisions.
Of course the pulse crops were stronger in terms of prices so that's resulted in the increase in area and the durum prices were stronger as well so that's why you're seeing the increase in area.
Barley increased because of the fact that it's a relatively inexpensive crop to grow and the malting bids especially were reasonably strong at the beginning of the year as well.
So we're seeing the combination of price and some of the agronomic factors influencing farmers' decisions.

Burnett notes dry conditions in Western Saskatchewan and most of Alberta have reduced yield potentials in those areas and the frost that hit western Manitoba and eastern Saskatchewan resulting in extensive replanting of canola, means that looks to be the crop that's going to be most impacted by the combination of lower area and dry conditions.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council