CNS Canada –– Canadian farmers are sitting on large stocks of poor-quality durum, which should cut into acres seeded to the crop this spring.
Durum stocks in the country, as of Dec. 31, 2016, came in at 6.9 million tonnes, marking a new record for that date, according to Statistics Canada data going back to 1980.
“It has no home; there’s no export market for it,” said Mike Jubinville of ProFarmer Canada on the country’s large disease-ridden durum stocks.
With no offshore demand for the feed-quality durum, he said, the large supplies will be metered out through domestic feed channels over a lengthy period.
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Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada made only a handful of alterations for its November report on principal field crops. The only changes AAFC made were with all wheat and durum exports plus domestic use for all wheat and corn in the estimates released on Nov. 24. The report had been initially scheduled for Nov. 19, but AAFC said they chose to delay it until after the United States Department of Agriculture issued its November supply and demand estimates following the U.S. government shutdown.
Canadian durum exports to date of 2.02 million tonnes compare with the 2.33 million exported during the same period in 2015-16, according to Canadian Grain Commission data.
“Farmers will be carrying a lot of durum into the new crop year, and most of it will be low quality,” said Jerry Klassen, manager of Canadian operations with GAP SA Grains and Products in Winnipeg.
Durum acres, he added, “are going to be down by about 30 per cent.”
A 30 per cent drop from the 6.19 million durum acres seeded in 2016 would see an acreage base of 4.33 million. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada currently forecasts a more modest decline, pegging 2017 durum area at 5.26 million acres.
— Phil Franz-Warkentin writes for Commodity News Service Canada, a Winnipeg company specializing in grain and commodity market reporting. Follow him at @philfw on Twitter.
