Canada’s harvest to be one of the best in decades

This year s harvest will be bountiful, with prices more than offset the increased costs for items like fuel.

A Year When Everything Is Right for Western Canada s Farmers

Forecasters expect near-record harvests for wheat and other crops from Canadian farmers this year. It was a remarkable reversal from 2021, the season of scorching temperatures and parching drought that devastated farms throughout Western Canada. My colleague Vjosa Isai and Brett Gundlock, a photographer on assignment for The Times, reported last August that a lack of feed had left ranchers in Manitoba contemplating selling some or all of the livestock their families had bred.

The farmers race to save their cattle from Canada's Drought Statistics Canada is forecasting that the harvests of wheat, canola, barley, wheat, soybeans and corn will be up this year, many of which will be double-digit percentages because of milder weather. The wheat crop, a mainstay of Canada's farm exports, is expected to increase by 55.6 percent from last year to 34.7 million metric tons. If that forecast is correct, it will be one of the top three harvests on record going back to 1908.

The joy of bountiful harvests can be offset by lower prices from a flooded market. Richard Gray, the Canadian grain policy research chair at the University of Saskatchewan, told me that this year, prices are certainly above average, very good. The disruption to Ukrainian agriculture caused by Russia's invasion is behind those prices. The cost of items like fuel, pesticides and fertilizer for farmers in Canada has been increased because of the war. Professor Gray said that the extra costs may be unwelcome, but they will be more than offset by the high prices farmers will receive for their crops. He said we are not in a cost price squeeze at all. The impact of increased exports will be felt globally as it helps remedy shortfalls caused by the war. The mustard industry in France, which relies heavily on imports of seeds from Western Canada to make Dijon, will see an end to the lingering shortages. There is a 192 percent chance that mustard seed production in Canada will increase over 2021.

There are perennial questions about the ability of railways and ports to actually get the harvest to overseas customers when it comes to farming in Canada. Professor Gray said they don't have a great track record of the railways and ports.

He said recent investments by grain companies at the port in Vancouver and railways in new hopper cars and more powerful locomotives that can pull longer trains have eliminated many bottlenecks in the system. Grain that is headed to Europe to replace imports from Ukraine, he said, comes from farms in Eastern Canada, where the grain-handling systems have long been running below capacity. The climate is the only potential trouble spot that remains. In British Columbia last year, floods cut off roads and rail lines to Vancouver. And unusually cold winters could also stop trains. Professor Gray said that 2022 should be a rare year when things have gone well for most farmers in Western Canada. He said that you won't get the farm community to say the same thing. It happens occasionally that they stop whining.