27/4/22 Prices
It looks like much of Kansas avoided a frost apart from the NW corner. Colby got down to -4C and Goodland -6C, but generally east and south of the far NW corner didn’t see the mercury drop below 1C. The NW corner of Kansas is one of the drier parts of Kansas at present, not as dry as the SW but still not ideal. Wheat there may have potentially been a little further along than the average but the area isn’t the biggest producing area of wheat, making up some 12% of Kansas production. So a slight loss of 10% may only account for a reduction of about 100kt to 150kt.
Markets do continue to react to the flooding across the US spring wheat belt. With 75mm of rain followed by heavy snow, flooding across the Red River Valley, much of NE N.Dakota and northern Minnesota is serious. The system also produced heavy rain across much of southern Manitoba and Ontario in Canada. All this while the major spring wheat and durum regions of southern Saskatchewan and Alberta remain dry.
Canadian farmers are currently predicted to sow 7.2% more wheat acres than last year, 17.6m of the 25m acres sown are spring wheat acres. Durum wheat area is also predicted to be higher, up 12.5% to 6.2mac.
The increases are restricted to wheat and durum (and corn). Canola is expected to see a decrease in sown area, back 7% to 20.9mac ???. The current high wheat price being the major influence to this according to StatsCanada. The area under barley is expected to decline 9.7% to 7.5mac. The area to barley in Saskatchewan falling a massive 17.6% to just 3.1mac, can’t argue with that.
Ukraine has sown 2.5mha of spring crops, 20% of the expected area. Russian mines now a terrible obstacle in the north. The black soil country to the east, where fighting is worst, could see a reduction of 70% in spring sown crops. Analyst predict a 30% reduction year of year to spring sown area.