Canada: Barley area estimated to have dropped 9.7% this year

Canadian farmers told Statistics Canada in its June 29 report that they seeded 3.6 million acres of grain corn in 2017, for an increase of 7.5 per cent from 2016. Manitoba set a new record for grain corn planted with 410,000 acres seeded this spring, an increase of 18.8 per cent from last year.

For barley, Saskatchewan and Alberta accounted for about 90 per cent of the Canadian total barley seeded acreage, at 1.7 million acres in Saskatchewan and 690,000 acres in Alberta. Saskatchewan’s acreage marks a 20.3 per cent increase, according the StatsCan report. Alberta’s total is a decrease of 4.2 per cent from a year ago.

Canada’s total barley area came in at 5.7 million acres – down from the preliminary estimate of 6 million and down 9.7% from the previous year.

Although malt barley requirements can be met with these acres age levels there is less cushion and more pressure on quality particularly in years where weather does not cooperate. In the same breath more malt barley is grown under contract now so that brings less risk to the system, industry analysts FJ Venn said.

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