MarketsFarm — As the market grapples with new planting projections from Statistics Canada, one thing was abundantly clear to MarketsFarm Pro analyst Mike Jubinville: this canola forecast isn’t enough to rectify tight ending stocks.
In StatsCan’s survey-based principal field crop areas report, released Tuesday, the federal agency pegged canola acres for 2021-22 at 21.53 million, up 3.6 per cent over the estimated acres seeded in 2020-21. Trade predictions obtained by MarketsFarm called for 21.5 million to 23.2 million acres of canola this year.
“You plug in a number like that in to the supply and demand balance, and as tight as we are for ending stocks in this marketing year, that’s just not enough [canola] acres to satisfy what the market is going to want for next year,” Jubinville said.
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“The tight stocks scenario for canola continues well into next year and maybe the year after that.”
As well, Jubinville suggested Statistics Canada likely has understated the amount of acres that will be eventually seeded this spring.
“The message has to be sent loud and clear — we need more acres,” he said, noting a bullish result did not emerge from a bullish estimate. While old-crop prices continued their upswing, new-crop prices were lower.
“It just goes to show there are bigger global issues at work, and canola as well as Canada are simply followers of these big, epic tidal moves in the marketplace,” Jubinville said.
As for other crops, Statistics Canada called for total wheat acres to fall 6.9 per cent in 2021-22 at 23.26 million. However, the amount of durum projected to be planted bumps up nearly 0.3 per cent, at more than 5.7 million.
The federal agency pegged barley acres to increase 13.9 per cent at 8.61 million. Meanwhile oats are expected to slip from 3.84 million acres in 2020-21 to 3.61 million for 2021-22.
Table: StatsCan preliminary estimates of field crop areas for 2021, released April 27, in thousands of acres, with 2020 figures for comparison. Source: Statistics Canada.
| 2020. . | 2021. . | % change | |
| Durum | 5,689 | 5,705 | 0.3 |
| Spring wheat | 17,926 | 16,340 | -8.8 |
| Winter wheat | 1,368 | 1,215 | -11.2 |
| Barley | 7,561 | 8,613 | 13.9 |
| Canary seed | 273 | 244 | -10.8 |
| Canola | 20,783 | 21,530 | 3.6 |
| Chickpeas | 298 | 212 | -28.7 |
| Grain corn | 3,559 | 3,623 | 1.8 |
| Dry beans | 457 | 414 | -9.4 |
| Dry field peas | 4,255 | 3,839 | -9.8 |
| Fall rye | 390 | 417 | 6.9 |
| Flax | 931 | 982 | 5.6 |
| Lentils | 4,233 | 4,218 | -0.3 |
| Mustard | 256 | 358 | 39.7 |
| Oats | 3,839 | 3,608 | -6.0 |
| Soybeans | 5,070 | 5,348 | 5.5 |
| Summerfallow. . | 1,726 | 1,604 | -7.1 |
| Sunflower | 112 | 84 | -24.9 |
Note: Winter wheat numbers are for area remaining after winterkill.
