Canadian farmers bask in dry spring

After two years of heartbreaking spring floods, farmers on the fertile Canadian Prairies are tuning up their tractors to roll out one of the earliest planting starts in the past decade. Last spring's floods left up to 6 million acres idle in Western Canada, but drier-than-usual conditions since summer mean farmers could start to sow crops by mid-April - a couple of weeks ahead of the usual seeding start.
"I can't think of a single area where farmers will be stuck in a snow drift," said Stuart McMillan, crops and weather analyst at the Canadian Wheat Board. Canada is the biggest exporter of spring wheat, canola and oats, and a smooth planting season would boost chances of a bumper harvest.
Larger canola supplies are in high demand because drought damaged South America's harvest of soyabeans - a rival to canola in the vegetable oil market - and US soya plantings are expected to fall short of last year. US spring wheat plantings are also losing ground to corn, according to the US Department of Agriculture, placing more focus on Canadian sowings of the wheat variety prized for baking.
Planting is well ahead of schedule in the United States, with spring wheat planting already 8 percent complete - four times the five-year average pace - according to the USDA. But blizzards in late April are no stranger to the Canadian Prairies and soils are still frozen in much of Alberta. Cold temperatures can kill plants that have poked through the soil or slow development enough to raise the risk of disease, McMillan said.
On the other hand, farmers stand to reap bigger-yielding crops from earlier plantings, as plants develop ahead of intense mid-summer heat. Early crops also command a higher price from grain handlers if delivered ahead of harvest bottlenecks. Grant McLean, cropping management specialist for the Saskatchewan government, said farmers may hold off until the third week of April to sow the earliest crops in south-western Saskatchewan. They will likely start with wheat and peas, he said, and avoid risking their canola, which costs more to plant. Government and trade estimates forecast a record-large canola area this year, with new-crop ICE November canola futures approaching a contract high this week.
Farmers may hesitate to mix any more wheat and barley into their crop rotations than necessary this year, which marks the first time in nearly 70 years that they will market grains outside the Wheat Board monopoly "It's canola's year, because of the dollars," McLean said. "And the (farmers) I've talked to, they're going to plant wheat, but this marketing uncertainty has made them less gung-ho." While the dryness is a welcome relief from hip waders and sandbag levees, it may be too dry. Most of the Prairies have collected between 40 and 85 percent of normal precipitation from September through March, according to the Canadian government's Drought Watch website.