Canada Markets

The Canadian Grain Commission has updated harvest quality results for spring wheat and durum, as of Oct. 29, the first update seen in two weeks. This provides an indication only, with the CGC indicating that the results do not include samples received in the past two weeks, while the program is not designed to "reflect actual production distributions across grades."

As of mid-October, the cutoff for samples in this report, we see that Manitoba Agriculture was estimating that 95% of the spring wheat was harvested, Saskatchewan was estimating roughly two-thirds of the spring wheat was off and the Alberta government was estimating that 62.6% of the spring wheat was harvested. As well, roughly 68% of Saskatchewan's durum crop was harvested and over 90% of Alberta's durum was taken off.

As seen on the attached chart, the percentage of spring wheat samples grading No. 1 Canada western red spring (CWRS) wheat fell by 9.2 percentage points over the past two weeks to 40.9% of total samples graded. The percentage of other grades were reported to increase, with the percentage of samples grading No. 2 CWRS up by 5.3 percentage points and No. 3 CWRS up by 3.4 percentage points.

Over the past two weeks, reported durum grades have remained relatively stable, with a slight drop in samples grading No. 1 Canada western amber durum (CWAD), falling by 0.6 percentage points to 29.7%, while the samples grading No. 2 increased by 1.3 percentage points to 26.3%.

As of Oct. 29, 3,012 samples of spring wheat have been graded along with 745 samples of durum. This compares to the total program consisting of 6,230 samples of spring wheat and 1,556 samples of durum graded in 2018, while the three-year average is 5,277 samples of spring wheat and 1,464 samples of durum.

As of week 11, or the week ending Oct. 20, the Canadian Grain Commission reports total receipts of CWRS at port terminals of 3.5584 million metric tons, down 917,500 metric tons receipted over the same period in 2018-19, while just 277,833 mt below the three-year average for this period.

To-date, 58.2% of the volume receipted has graded No. 1 CWRS, down from 83.6% of receipts over the same period of 2018-19 while higher than the three-year average of 47.4% of the total volume unloaded as a No.1. An additional 37.7% of receipts have been unloaded at port terminals as a No. 2 CWRS, below the three-year average of 47.2% graded No. 2 over the same 11-week period.

Over the same 11-week period, durum unloads at port terminals were reported at 1.331 mmt, well above the three-year average of 898,000 mt. So far this crop year, 80.4% of total unloads have graded in the top two grades. This compares to 94% over the same period in 2018-19 and the three-year average of 56%.

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