(Resource News International) — Cash bids for mustard in Western Canada are currently being classified anywhere from “mediocre” to a “disaster.”
Of the mustard varieties, browns were seeing having the most problems at present. “There are very few farmers who I know of that can make money off of selling brown mustard at 20 cents a pound,” said Baine Fritzler, chairman of the Saskatchewan Mustard Development Commission.
Values for all three mustard varieties really haven’t changed all that much over the past couple of months, the merchandiser said, but that doesn’t mean that producers shouldn’t hold out some hope.
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“I was speaking to an oilseed processor in the U.S. recently, and he was confident that mustard production in the U.S. northern plains will be down in the upcoming season,” said Fritzler, who farms at Govan, about 100 km north of Regina.
“The drop in U.S. supply certainly won’t be bad for producers in Western Canada, but we will need to work through our own supply base first to see any real price benefit.”
While there are ideas that Canada’s mustard ending stocks are not as large as being projected by Statistics Canada, the supply base is still larger than what it was the previous year, he said.
There were ideas that more of the mustard crop in Western Canada was not harvested than the figures being used by the federal statistics agency.
Current 2009-10 mustard carryout stocks from the government were in the 90,000 tonne range, Fritzler said. There was talk that the ending stocks will be in the 70,000-tonne area, when the dust finally settled, he said.
“However, that would still be twice as much as what there was the previous crop year,” Fritzler said, noting this would still result in mustard supplies being ‘extremely comfortable’ heading into 2010-11.
“Feelers”
Another factor to be addressed is the ability to export mustard into Europe given the clampdown currently in play on genetically modified (GM) crops, he said.
A European wing of Greenpeace last year reported findings of GM canola “events” in Dijon mustard. There is no known GM mustard variety in Canada.
Whether producers will plant mustard in the spring of 2010 is still up in the air, Fritzler said.
“There are a few new-crop bids being tossed around by some of the major companies, but to tell you the truth those can be considered as feelers rather than anything else,” he said, noting that the new-crop bids being offered were on the low side.
Oriental new-crop bids were said to be in the 23- to 24-cents per pound range, yellows around 26 cents and browns in the 20- to 21-cent area.
Cash bids for yellow mustard in Western Canada, based on Prairie Ag Hotwire data, currently range from 24.3 to 25.8 cents per pound, for brown mustard 20 to 21.8 cents and for oriental mustard 22.3 to 23.8 cents.
At the end of December, yellow mustard bids ranged from 24.3 to 25.8 cents per pound, browns from 20 to 21.8 cents and for orientals 22.3 to 23.8 cents.
