Canola delayed

Friday, May 23, 2014

by SUSAN MANN

Extremely cool, wet weather is hampering canola growers’ efforts to get their crop in the ground and only 40 per cent of the crop has been planted so far this season, says an Ontario agriculture ministry spokesman.

Brian Hall, canola and edible beans specialist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food, says “we’re still way, way behind where we would normally be for canola. Normally by this point we would be getting pretty close to being done planting.”

Hall also estimates only half of the acres planted last year will be grown this year. Last year, about 65,000 acres were planted and this year it will be less than 30,000 acres.

Poor soils conditions even now are making it hard for growers to get their planting done. In addition, last fall was wet making it difficult for some farmers to do their tillage at that time. “We had some growers who still had corn out in the fields this spring,” he says, noting it wasn’t a huge acreage.

April had a lot of days when it was cool and wet and that was coupled with a slow snow melt. That cool, wet trend has continued into May so far, he explains.

Growers have been able to plant corn, canola and spring cereals on the lighter soils and where drainage has been good. But on heavier soils “they’ve hardly been able to get in the fields to do anything,” Hall says.

“We haven’t had large amounts of rain. It’s just been very constant,” he says. “It has been cool so those soils just are not warming up and they’re not drying up.”

Some of the earliest canola plantings this year went in just 10 days ago and it’s just starting to emerge.

Farmers don’t have much time left to plant canola. Agricorp’s final planting deadline is May 31 in southwestern, eastern Ontario and Niagara region. The deadline for central Ontario is June 5, while northern Ontario growers have until June 10 to get their canola planted.

Stephanie Charest, Agricorp spokesperson, says the final planting deadline is the last day “a crop can be planted and still qualify for production insurance coverage.”

Carrie James, general manager for the Ontario Canola Growers Association, says Ontario isn’t a big “piece of the pie. So what we plant isn’t really going to affect the overall supply in Canada.”

James says they expected that the acreage would be down somewhat this year also because of the swede midge problems last year. As for this year, they don’t know if the swede midge problems will continue. “We’re working on trying to get a better grasp on it.”

Western Canadian farmers, who grow the bulk of the canola in the country, are also being hampered by cool, wet weather and their planting is behind too, she notes.

James says if there are a few dry days, most of the canola for southwestern and eastern Ontario should be planted by the May 31 Agricorp deadline. In northern Ontario, there could be a few more growers planting canola because those farmers “tend to plant soybeans first due to the short season. Because it has been shortened up due to the late planting, some of those farmers are swinging back to canola this year so we may, in fact, pick up some acreage in the north.” Forty to 50 per cent of the canola acreage is grown in northern Ontario. BF