Canadian farmers harvested their sixth record soybean crop in a row and their second-largest canola crop, said Statistics Canada, with the harvest season over. The canola crop was 11 percent larger than the previous StatsCan estimate in October and was 1 million tonnes more than traders expected. Canola is Canada’s major oilseed, at 15.6 million tonnes this year, down from 18 million tonnes last year. Soybeans totaled 6 million tonnes this year, up 13 percent from 2013.
StatsCan raised the canola estimate, said Agrimoney, because “the yield had fallen less than expected from last year’s bumper figure of 40.0 bushels per acre, reaching 34.4 bushels per acre, with increased estimates for results in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.”
Wheat growers reaped 29.3 million tonnes of the grain, said StatsCan, up from its previous estimate of 27.5 million tonnes. It pegged the corn crop at 11.5 million tonnes vs the previous 11.4 million tonnes.
With the harvest season well under way, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences said earlier this week that drought would limit the wheat crop to 23.2 million tonnes, a drop of 14 percent from the 2013-14 total.
Canada and Australia, two of the world’s major wheat growers, are forecast to account for a quarter of world wheat exports this marketing year. Australia is expected to ship 17.5 million tonnes and Canada 22 million tonnes during the current trade year, according to USDA.