Canada Markets

After an extremely slow start to movement this crop year, Canadian durum exports in week 16 or the week ending Nov. 20 were reported at 205,200 metric tons (mt), the largest weekly volume shipped since week 39 of the 2020-21 crop year, or 81 weeks.

This volume was well above the 106,000 mt needed this week to stay on course to reach the current Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) forecast of 5 million metric tons (mmt), as indicated by the red line on the chart. As seen from the chart, weekly exports have far surpassed the weekly volume needed in four of the past six shipping weeks.

Cumulative exports of 1.283 mmt (green line on the attached chart) are up 22.6% from last year, just 1.5% below the five-year average, but still below the steady pace needed to reach the current forecast, which is calculated at 1.538 mmt and shown by the black line on the attached chart and plotted against the secondary vertical axis. This is the third-largest volume shipped during this period over the past five years.

During the past five years, an average of 29.5% of total exports were achieved in the Canadian Grain Commission's weekly data as of week 16. This pace projects forward to crop year exports of 4.349 mmt, falling short of the current forecast.

During the past week, commercial stocks of durum increased modestly to 766,600 mt, 4.3% higher than the three-year average and 8.2% higher than the five-year average.

Upcoming on Dec. 2 is Statistics Canada's final production estimates for the crop year and the durum estimate will be watched closely. There remains a 5-bushel-per-acre gap in estimates between Saskatchewan Agriculture's estimates and Statistics Canada, with Saskatchewan Agriculture estimated yield at 31 bpa while compared to the official estimate of 36 bpa. This points to a difference in production of close to 650,000 mt based on Statistics Canada's harvested acre estimate.

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

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