Wheat yields and quality variable

Thursday, July 25, 2013

by SUSAN MANN

This year’s wheat crop is far more variable than in previous years with some farmers harvesting excellent quality and high yielding wheat, while other growers are facing poor quality or low yields.

Peter Johnson, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food cereals specialist, says the wheat crop is “a dog’s breakfast.” In addition, it’s rare to see this much variability in the crop.

Last year, “we were surprised at how good the crop was,” he says. But this year for the most part “we are very disappointed. Quality and grade discounts are higher than we would like them to be.”

Overall yields are okay but not amazing, he adds. Fusarium has robbed farmers of the good yields they expected to have.

There are farmers with excellent quality and yields, while others have disappointing yields and poor quality. There are also farmers with low yields and good quality and others with high yields and poor quality. “It really is all over the map,” he says.

Wheat harvest is progressing full steam ahead “with this good stretch of weather” but the crop is slow to dry down. Some farmers with poorer quality wheat plan to wait until the crop is drier.

Harvest is in various stages across Ontario, with the southwestern part of the province being the most advanced. Essex and Kent counties along with areas south of Highway 401 are well along in harvest and farmers in those areas are three-quarters completed.

North of Highway 401, harvest is about 25 per cent finished but growers are “going to make big inroads over the next two or three days,” he says.

As for quality, Johnson says the quality is better south of Highway 401. “A lot of fields have been excellent” but there are also some pockets of lower yields, such as east Elgin County.

There have also been excellent yields and good quality in the Niagara Peninsula area, along with in Chatham-Kent and Essex counties. Yields have been reported as high as 134 bushels per acre, but there is a lot between 85 and 110 bushels per acre in southwestern Ontario.

For some producers west of London it’s “the best wheat crop they’ve ever grown,” Johnson says.

In Grey, Bruce and Simcoe counties, there is solid to excellent yields and good quality.

Farmers north of London, in east Lambton, Middlesex, Oxford, Perth, Huron and west Wellington counties, are facing poor quality. East of Toronto there is also poor quality wheat but yields are pretty good.

There is almost no Grade 1 wheat this year. “Everybody either has low test weight or mildew or black point or something to pull them to a Grade 2,” he says. The rest of the crop ranges from a good Grade 2 all the way to sample. “There have been wheat samples in the countryside that have 12 per cent fusarium,” Johnson notes, adding fusarium is a very significant problem this year. Even some of the areas with good wheat are still running with .6 to .8 per cent fusarium. “That tells you that it’s out there everywhere. It’s just not as big an issue in some areas as in other areas.”

Todd Austin, Grain Farmers of Ontario marketing manager, says this year’s crop size is estimated at more than two million tonnes. About 950,000 acres of wheat were grown across Ontario this year.

Last year, there were 630,000 acres, while the year before that there were 800,000 to 900,000 acres and from 2007 to 2010 there were one million to more than one million acres grown annually. This year’s crop isn’t the largest ever grown in Ontario, but it’s one of the largest ones grown during the past three years, he says.

A major chunk of the wheat crop is used domestically for flour milling, while another sizable amount is exported to the United States, Austin notes. For the past two years, some of the wheat has gone into the feed market too.

Export markets have been hit and miss during the past couple years, “but with a crop this size I am sure guys are looking at some kind of export program,” he notes. BF