Bad weather?
If what I’ve seen out my windshield in the past 10 days is any indication, we’ve just plain stopped growing the stuff.
Bad weather?
If what I’ve seen out my windshield in the past 10 days is any indication, we’ve just plain stopped growing the stuff.
I keep forgetting. What is the politically correct name for that crop now?
I remember thinking 30 years ago when I was out there, that I was seeing a lot more of that, than wheat.
canola
Canola – Big too in the Peace River country.
Land of Rape and Honey. Anybody remember that?
Tisdale Saskatchewan-Land of Rape and Honey.
Had the bumper sticker.
Tisdale Saskatchewan-Land of Rape and Honey.
Had the bumper sticker.
I have this question/info posted under the Russian tow truck below:
After just checking todays (Friday) markets…wheat is down the limit.
Ontario 2010 contracts @ 233$ (rounded off) a metric tonne.
Ontario 2011 contracts @ 268$ (rounded off) a metric tonne.
How does this compare to Western producers and what the CWB is offering
BTW canola oil is good for the heart!
The canola’s blooming in the West as well, and the fields are looking georgeous. Haven’t heard how much wheat has been planted; but wheat futures rose when Russia stopped exporting.
Hope the Wheat Board is planning on setting enough aside for we Canadians instead of shipping it all offshore because the price is right.
Canola the catchy name for Canadian Oil is second only to fields of flax in bloom for cruising the miles by and checking the sky.
Too bad Borlaug’s passed on.
Anyone who gets a good wheat crop off ( and there are lots of them… you’re driving the wrong roads, Kate) is going to do very well this year. Especially with Russia suspending exports.
SDH, according to the Left, Borlaug must be the devil himself. Not only did he promote genetic engineering (I can hear the latte sipping fair trade organic liberals choke) but he helped the third world feed itself. We all know that the only way the third world can be fed is through massive billion dollar subsidies from the West. /sarc
Tell me again why we still have the CWB? Why would you grow wheat if there was only one place to sell it?
As Kate alludes to there is far less wheat being grown across the cdn prairies than sound rotation practices would dictate.
The reason is simple – CWB regulated crops do not pay as well as non-board crops. That Canola yellow is almost the predominant bloom in these parts is a harsh a damnation of the board as anything else.
Please tell me that barley is still a major crop ….
lentils, lentils, lentils……
Hardly ever see the stuff. Rye either.
Indeed Doug, helping people feed themselves makes one the spawn of Satan.
No worries Matt, the hops crisis seems to have passed as well.
There’s big money in coriander is SK. Most of it goes to India.
Well, Kate, it may not lead to that much-desired famine, but higher food prices may jolt some people into rethinking “global warming” energy policies that would increase the price of gasoline, oil, natural gas, etc.
So many people need a Reality Check, it’s truly pathetic the state to which Western Civilization finds itself.
I just came home from a crop tour in SW Sask. There are tens of thousands of lush wheat and durum fields in the Southwest. I would guess that the US winter wheat crop is now 90% completed. North Dakota durum will soon be ready.
When wheat was king, the Saskatchewan wheat crop did have a postive effect on world supplies. Today, many other countries are exporting what was once ours. Keep in mind that continuous cropping, chemicals and fertilizers have raised yields considerably–peas and lentils have now taken over. In the North, Canola is still king.
Nothing however can be quite as exhilerating as driving around the countryside on a hot fall afternoon, watching amber waves of golden wheat slowly ondulating in the west wind, while sipping on a cool brew.
Just stopping by to take my dues. Last time there were New Year predictions on SDA , I posted as number one dramatic increase in food prices. This is just the beginning.
PS: Love your picture.
PS: Love your picture.
Time to start storing flour and rice.
Having just returned from a roadtrip to my home town in southern Saskatchewan, I’d found myself mesmerized and visually excited by the GREEN fields with circular golden bales of hay beneath warm blue skies criss-crossed by dramatic streaks of cloud. Whipped my camera out fast. I love the prairie landscapes.
It’s not rapeseed any more, it’s sexualassaultseed.
We could all do with a bit less wheat in our diet. Bread and Pasta is nice, but so it rice and well, you know veggies.
Alway look on he bright side of life eh?
It’s been cold and wet in Alberta.
look folks i am only 31 years old and i was alway’s told by my grandpa and grandma that is was rape seed so stop o.k.
Paul in calgary
If you will all indulge me ..please look at the last three especialy the “more pavillions at folk fest” article and please read my comment’s there and once you do you can throw the CANADIAN WHEAT BOARD AND EVERY SINGLE ENTITY ATTATCHED TO IT AS WELL in there to ..lol. if yuo don’t like our country or our farmers GET THE F$%K OUT.
have a great weekend everyone
Paul in calgary
Kate- I realize you’ve travelled west to east (Deslisle to Wpg) the last week or so which pretty much correlates to the area sufferring from excessive moisture this growing season.
King Wheat is no more, but a lot of that yellow might not be seeded canola fields in bloom either, but rather fields that were too wet to seed, and are now still too wet to till or spray. What you see could be volunteer canola, in other words- weeds, which would never translate into a viable crop. Fact is, it’s going to take considerable time, expense and effort to reclaim these acres back to productivity.
Over the years, we’ve pretty much gone to the reduced tillage/continuous cropping format. Works great when Ma Nature co-operates, but when she has one of her PMS moments- everybody take cover! This year- ZERO canola acres for me!
With the recurrent rains, we’ve resurrected the old cultivators and harrows to just disturb the surface to dry it out a bit, so we might have a chance at getting it in shape for a crop next year. In all my years, there’s been none like this one. No fun!
That said, some areas are finding ideal conditions and their crops look great. With the improved prices, it could be a banner year. I’m happy for you. I really am!
Canola isn’t rape rape.
“Canola” is actually a trademarked name, held by the canola council of canada, and can only be applied to specific strains of rapeseed engineered to be low in erucic acid and glucosinolates. LEAR, or low erucic acid rapeseed, provides a meal (what’s left over after the oil is pressed out) that is suitable for animal feed.
See? I knew all that book learnin’ back in undergrad would come in handy some day. I can impress folks at parties with these amazing facts.
“i was alway’s told by my grandpa and grandma that is was rape seed so stop o.k. ”
In your grandparent’s day it was rapeseed.
That was then, now it’s all canola.
from Wikipedia: [you know how to use that Google thingie?]
Canola is one of two cultivars of rapeseed. Their seeds are used to produce edible oil that is fit for human consumption because it has lower levels of erucic acid than traditional rapeseed oils and to produce livestock feed because it has reduced levels of the toxic glucosinolates. Canola was originally naturally bred from rapeseed in Canada by Keith Downey and Baldur R. Stefansson in the early 1970s, but it has a very different nutritional profile in addition to much less erucic acid. The name “canola” was derived from “Canadian oil, low acid” in 1978″
wheat prices from our CWB ( all prices freight and elevation deducted from NWT, Unity)( price per bushel)
initial price, Red Spring Wheat #1, 12.5% protein $1.97
Projected final price $4.29
initial price, Durum #2, 11.5% protein $1.44
projected price $3.90
#1 wheat in the States is selling for over 10.00
Drove from Coronation to Lloydminster last evening, (872->599->41->14->17) Seen a lot of corn & a lot of canola.
Just to illustrate the difference paid to wheat producers in the 2 regions I’ll quote the prices paid in bushels for Ontario hard red wheat (see Brad’s post at 3:22 a.m to compare)
2010 contracts delivered at elevator 6.34$ a bushel
2011 contracts delivered at elevator 7.29$ a bushel.
No need to wonder why???? there is way less wheat acres planted when you see the price spread.
Canola is the main (legal) crop they grow in the GTA too, that and corn, none of which gets to the table, at least directly. We suspect however that GM varieties of canola grow up to be fields of tick-tackys, ’cause that’s what seems to sprout in any field formerly planted in canola around here.
A local entrepreneur built a small driving range about four years back between Oakville and Milton and ran it for two or three summers. This spring he (or somebody) plowed it under, barely stopping to take out the distance markers, and planted it in canola. Hand-seeding the land with golf balls apparently didn’t pay as well.
Kate,
I noted this around here in MI the other day and mentioned it to my wife.
She said that the winter wheat is off already and they usually put in another crop of something else around here. Corn is about 10′ now and the beans are about 2′.
“volunteer” canola is de rigeur.
Only a practice eye can differentiate between seeded canola and uncontrolled volunteer.
Harvesting canola like many small seeds is a true art form.
Bare in mind that the harvesting machine is labled a “combine” for very good reason….combining the functions of reaping, threshing, separating and cleaning……by varying means, shaking, sifting, centrifical and winnowing (airblast/specific gravity)
A ripe crop has an attendant header loss….a factor even in soybeans.
Then the problem of immature heads/pods which defy threshing, but explode in the straw chopper, but still produce somewhat viable seed.
Then there is the problem of balancing the wind setting to clean the grain from the trash without blowing grain out.
Then like harvesting cereals the simple fact that light, chaffy but viable seeds go out with the straw……or you have a bin with a chaffy sample that gets docked and won’t keep.
Harvesting loss regrowing is a factor even in soy or corn (large, dense grain) which is infinitely easier to separate and clean than canola for example.
In principle the harvest loses will always exceed the seeding rate by many factors. After harvest tillage is more to control volunteers than normal weeds.
It is worth noting that the Russian crop failure due to drought is not an unprecedented event. Khruschev’s “virgin lands” programme foundered on drought much like Stalin’s “5-year plan” agenda for the same reason and in the same place.
Khruschev was largely overthrown by this and much of Stalin’s bloddy purges were to maintain power and blame the shortage on scapegoats such as kullacks.
I know that you must consider the source, but there might not be a looming wheat shortage.
FAO cuts wheat production forecast but considers supplies adequate
4 August 2010, Rome – The impact of unfavourable weather events on crops in recent weeks has led FAO to cut its global wheat production forecast for 2010 to 651 million tonnes, from 676 million tonnes reported in June.
But despite production problems in some leading exporting countries, the world wheat market remains far more balanced than at the time of the world food crisis in 2007/08 and fears of a new global food crisis are not justified at this point, FAO said.
http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/44570/icode/
Summer doesn’t appear to have been good for Alberta farmers. Buddies in the Peace country are complaining about one of their dryest summers in years, while most people in the south either couldn’t get seeded or had their seeds drowned out from all the bloody rain. Only area that seems to be doing okay is the Special Areas, where they’re apparently getting more rain and better crops than they’ve seen in fifty years.
Just north of Saskatoon there are quite a number of fields that were not seeded due to excess moisture. There is a tremendous amount of canola, some peas and a little wheat. All the crops look good.
I have been watching the commodity prices on barchart website and US pirces have spiked considerably, although some dropped off a bit late Friday.
http://www.barchart.com/futures/
Time to get rid of the Wheat Board.
The only reason that we grow any wheat anymore is that there’s nothing else that will fit into the crop rotation. I’ll bet the farm that the Wheat Board already has contracted our wheat out from under us for cheap so that we’ll never see the advantage of higher prices. I wonder what life would be like if we could actually sell what we grow to who we want to at the price we decide on….
Oh well – we’ve got canola instead. Kill the CWB dead.
Aside from the Russian drought diminishing world wheat reserves, ya”ll should be considering other potential global crop threats like “Wheat Rust”.
http://www.economist.com/node/16481593
http://www.thefencepost.com/article/20100603/NEWS/100609904
Just saying, it could go from bad to worst very quickly………………..
Just fyi – the shot was taken in Alberta, near Drumheller, I think.
There’s nothing like rippin up the backroads of Alberta on a motorcycle this time of year 🙂
THAT explains a lot. I live in the Wilamette valley in north western Oregon, grass seed capital of the world. I’ve only lived here for about three years, but this year (as opposed to the previous two) a good percentage of the fields have been largely converted over to wheat. My wife and I had been wondering exactly what the cause was, but if there has been a drop in production elsewhere and an expected spike in price… Well, like I said, that explains a lot. Still, I do wonder if it’s just normal crop rotation or response to market forces. Eh, I don’t know. I’m an engineering student, living things mystify me!