MarketsFarm — Ahead of the crop production report from Statistics Canada (StatCan) due out Friday, trade expectations are above and below what the federal agency estimated in September.
In August, and in September, StatCan issued production reports based on a satellite model and without any input from farmers filling out surveys. That has caused some consternation in the trade, with analysts and traders having difficulty at arriving their own projections.
“If the grower did a survey in August and Stat Canada [finds] all of the growers are saying ‘The yields are better than we thought’ then we can justify bumping up the estimates a little,” stated Ken Ball of PI Financial.
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Jon Driedger of Leftfield Commodity Research echoed that sentiment.
“The previous estimates were based on their modelling. Just by virtue alone, that makes it a little bit difficult in terms of an apples-to-apples comparison,” he said.
Nevertheless, several analysts and traders offered their views on what numbers could be in Friday’s StatCan report. Canola projections collected by MarketsFarm were 18.6 million to 19.7 million tonnes, compared to StatCan’s current estimate of 19.1 million.
MarketsFarm Pro analyst Mike Jubinville stressed StatCan’s previous yield average was “a touch too high given the southern Alberta and western Saskatchewan drought areas.”
However, on the high side was Errol Anderson of ProMarket Communications, at 19.5 million tonnes, noting his number had been the average trade estimate going into the previous StatCan report.
“I think the trade is more accurate than StatCan on this one,” he said.
When it came to all wheat, forecasts were also above and below StatCan’s number of 34.7 million tonnes. MarketsFarm analyst Bruce Burnett pegged all wheat at 33.8 million tonnes while his colleague Jubinville went high at 35.5 million.
In the middle was Terry Reilly of Futures International, who opted to stick with the current StatCan estimate, noting “the wheat season was mainly completed by the time the last report came out.”
Independent trader Jerry Klassen warned StatCan’s modelling tends to be somewhat conservative and could miss some factors such as the weather.
For instance, Klassen said, barley on the Prairies largely had excellent growing conditions, with numerous nights with ideal temperatures of 19.5 C or lower.
However, all of the estimates could end up meaning very little, as analyst Wayne Palmer of Exceed Grain pointed out.
“I don’t think the report is going to mean much, no matter what numbers come back,” he said. “You only trade that number for the first hour.”
Table: Trade projections of Canadian crop production in 2022-23, in millions of tonnes, with Statistics Canada’s 2021-22 numbers and latest 2022-23 estimates for comparison.
| Crop | 2021-22. . | 2022-23. . | Trade estimates (range) |
| Canola | 13.757 | 19.098 | 18.6-19.7 |
| Flax | 0.346 | 0.465 | 0.475-0.5 |
| Soybeans | 6.271 | 6.505 | 6.35-6.8 |
| Lentils | 1.606 | 2.777 | 2.5-2.8 |
| Barley | 6.959 | 9.428 | 9.425-10.1 |
| Oats | 2.808 | 4.654 | 4.54-5.3 |
| All wheat | 22.296 | 34.702 | 33.8-35.5 |
| -Wheat (no durum). . | 19.258 | 28.585 | 25.3-29.7 |
| -Durum | 3.038 | 6.117 | 5.6-6.5 |
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