Ontario farmers turn to spring cereals

by SUSAN MANN

One reason farmers increased their spring cereal planting this year is because of damage to the winter wheat crop, says provincial agriculture ministry cereal specialist Peter Johnson.

All the seed suppliers have been quite surprised by the demand and “in fact some of them are now out of seed so we can’t plant more because we’ve run out of seed,” Johnson says, adding not all seed suppliers have exhausted their supplies and farmers could still plant more if they hunt around for seed.

Johnson says rough winter weather this year left holes and thin spots in winter wheat fields and there were some farmers who subsequently inter-seeded either barley or spring wheat, which is a hard red wheat and can only be seeded into hard red winter wheat fields “and even that is pretty questionable. You need to make sure the mill you’re dealing with is willing to take the blend.” He adds that farmers can’t plant spring wheat into soft white or soft red wheat fields “because then you just have feed.” The baking and milling properties of hard and soft wheat are so different that if they’re inter-planted in the same fields “that is also feed wheat.”

In fields where barley was inter-seeded with wheat, he says “those areas have to be combined separately and that’s feed because you can’t have barley and wheat together and call it wheat.”

Johnson says he hasn’t had time to track yet how much spring cereal planting has increased this year but he will eventually have a number. “There’s a real range of factors why we’re seeing more spring cereal acres.”

Straw will be in short supply this year because “the winter wheat crop took it on the chin. We think we lost 15 per cent of the crop, which takes us down to under 700,000 acres and at least 10 per cent of the acres left are gone due to holes and thin spots. At the end of the day, there will be about 600,000 acres worth of straw and not everyone is willing to part with their straw. It’s a pretty low number of winter wheat straw supply and that’s why guys are growing spring cereals.”

Another reason spring cereal planting has increased is farmers who are having difficulty growing canola due to problems with swede midge have increased their spring cereal acreage “because they don’t want the canola,” he explains.

Ray Robertson, manager of the Ontario Forage Council, says they have a straw and hay listing service where people can buy or sell hay or straw. “We’ve noticed the straw prices have increased mainly because of increased demand for it.”

Robertson says he doesn’t have an exact dollar figure for the straw price increase. “Everybody’s talking about the price being much higher.”

The growing straw demand is coming from a variety of sources, including dairy farmers for mixing in their rations, the mushroom industry and for road construction work. “A lot of road construction companies are buying bales and either chopping them or using them as a dyke by the roadsides,” Robertson says, adding he knows of one person who had a request for 4,000 small, square bales for road construction work. The straw is used in road construction for stopping soil erosion.

For hay, Joel Bagg, provincial agriculture ministry forage specialist, says in the May 27 issue of the field crop news newsletter yields in 2012 were down and reported to be 50 to 75 per cent of normal due to drought and other factors, such as winter kill, spring frost and insect damage. Yields were much better in 2013 but wet weather during first cut resulted in a considerable amount of hay being either rain damaged or moldy because it was baled at too high a moisture level.

This past winter was long and hard, resulting in some alfalfa winter kill in some parts of Ontario this spring, and that means inventories of quality horse hay may be tight again depending on what the weather will be like this growing season, he notes, adding hay will be available but not necessarily at prices people are used to paying.

Robertson says everyone is hoping for a good year this year “because we came into last year with no reserves at all.” That shortage in 2012 resulted in very high prices of 16 cents to 17 cents a pound, which was double what it sold for before. During last winter a lot of hay was selling “at a very low price because it was a very poor quality.” But good quality hay is still selling really quite well, he notes. BF