Canada Markets

Included in the many challenges that the statisticians face in preparing their March planting intentions report for Statistics Canada, such as the timing of the data collection and the degree of reliability of the data collected, is the impact that weather has on the planting intentions.

The attached chart shows the difference between Statistics Canada's estimates of planting intentions, taken from their annual March Intentions of Principal Field Crop Areas, as compared to the final estimate of seeded acreage for the year. The red line with markers measures the acreage difference between the two estimates, measured in 1,000 acres against the left primary y-axis, while the blue bars measure the percent difference, as measured on the right secondary y-axis.

Over the past 10 years, from 2003 to 2012, the actual seeded acres of barley were an average of 9.4% lower than the March seeding intentions, which resulted in an average difference of 779,800 acres.

At first look, one would suspect that challenging spring conditions that leads to later-than-normal seeding could result in higher-than-expected plantings of the shorter-season barley crop, but this has not been the case in this 10-year period. Using Saskatchewan Agriculture's final crop report as a proxy for the prairies, we see that some of the most challenging springs, such as 2006, 2010 and 2011, actually led to sharp declines in barley plantings as seen on the attached chart, as millions of acres of land either went unseeded or were actually seeded and later flooded due to excessive moisture.

For example, the Saskatchewan Agriculture final crop report for 2006 suggests that 2 million acres were not seeded, 2010 suggests that 8 million acres were left unseeded while 4 million acres were seeded and flooded, while 2011 suggests that 6.2 million acres were left unseeded while 2.2 million acres were seeded but flooded.

The March intentions report has indicated barley acres to fall 2.2% from 2012 to a level of 7.239 million acres. While this was perhaps unwelcome news for the feed and malt industries, the odds favor a further cut in acres given the 10-year trend of over-stated acres in the March release.

Cliff Jamieson can be reached at cliff.jamieson@telventdtn.com

(AG)

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