Ontario farmers planted more wheat in the fall, but fewer soybeans, barley and oats to be seeded this year, according to Statistics Canada report

Thursday, April 28, 2016

by SUSAN MANN

Ontario farmers planted more winter wheat last fall compared to the previous year meaning they will be cutting the number of acres planted to soybeans, barley and oats this spring.

According to the March 2016 Statistics Canada principal field crops report released last week, Ontario farmers seeded one million acres of winter wheat in the fall of 2015 for harvest in 2016. That’s up 39 per cent, or 325,000 acres, from the 675,000 acres seeded in the fall of 2014 for the 2015 crop.

Winter wheat remaining after the winter is also up this year compared to the previous year. For this year, there were 985,000 acres remaining, which is 355,000 acres more than in 2015. That year there were 630,000 acres remaining.

Barry Senft, Grain Farmers of Ontario CEO, says one farmer near Guelph told him “this is the best wheat crop that’s come through the winter in the last 10 years.”

Ontario has the largest soybean acreage of all provinces across Canada. This year, farmers said they would plant 2.7 million acres, which is down 7.8 per cent from last year’s 2.9 million acres planted.

Senft says last year’s soybean crop was the best one harvested in the past three years and that means farmers were able to “get that winter wheat in. The drop in soybeans is because that land went into winter wheat.”

Barley and oat plantings were up in 2015, compared to 2014, but will be down this year, according to the report. For barley, farmers said they would plant 100,000 acres this year, compared to 115,000 acres in 2015. For oats, 70,000 acres will be planted compared to 130,000 acres that went in last year.

The plantings for oats and barley were up in 2015 “because a lot of winter wheat didn’t get seeded” in the fall of 2014, he says. “Guys were looking at the crop (barley and oats) itself and also needed it for the straw, because they weren’t going to get it from the winter wheat.”

The level of barley and oats being planted this year “is going down to somewhat more normal, five-year levels,” he says.

For this year, farmers will be getting their straw from that “potentially big wheat crop” and that’s why barley and oat plantings will be down, Senft notes.

Grain corn plantings in Ontario are slated to be 2.2 million acres this year, up 4.6 per cent from the slightly more than two million acres seeded in 2015.

Nationally, farmers said they would be planting more barley and grain corn this year compared to last year and smaller acreages of wheat, canola, soybeans and oats, according to the report.

Statistics Canada collected the information on crop planting intentions from March 16 to 31. It surveyed 11,500 farmers. Subsequent surveys during the year will outline estimates of actual seeded acreages, the report says. BF