MarketsFarm — Seasonal harvest pressure and expectations for large corn deliveries from the United States should limit any upside potential in feed barley bids in Western Canada for the foreseeable future despite this year’s smaller crop.
“We’re getting some better-than-expected yields (in central Alberta), so there is some harvest pressure with guys needing to move grain for bin space,” said grain trader Jay Janzen of CorNine Commodities in Lacombe, Alta.
“It seems like (the market) will grind sideways for awhile, and then once the corn hits the market in November… I imagine it will limit the upside on things,” Janzen added.
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He noted while farmers are not excited about selling at current prices, they likely won’t have much choice going forward.
Janzen estimated about three million tonnes of corn would be coming up from the U.S. during the marketing year, making up about a third of Canada’s feed demand and offsetting any losses in Canadian production.
Canada grew 7.8 million tonnes of barley in 2023, according to the latest Statistics Canada estimate. That was down by 100,000 tonnes from the August forecast and well below the nearly 10 million tonnes grown the previous year.
Meanwhile, export data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that there is already about 750,000 tonnes of U.S. corn sales to Canada on the books for movement during the 2023-24 marketing year — well above the 37,800 tonnes at the same time a year ago.
— Phil Franz-Warkentin is an associate editor/analyst with MarketsFarm in Winnipeg.
