September 18, 2009

The Canadian Wheat Board had been taking a cautious approach to making sales of wheat and barley for the 2009-10 crop year due to the late harvest in western Canada, but the weather during the past two weeks have changed things significantly, a CWB official said.

 

"The weather over the past two weeks has been nothing less than absolutely extraordinary and that has been great news for producers who have been trying to get a crop off," said Gord Flaten, CWB vice president of marketing and sales. "As a result of the improved weather, we now have a better handle of what we will be working with in terms of quantity and quality for both wheat and barley."

 

He acknowledged that a couple of weeks ago the weather conditions seen across western Canada were believed to have been detrimental for the quality of the wheat crop.

 

"We were using caution at that time in terms of forward selling high-grade, high protein wheat as the weather was expected to have caused some downgrading of the wheat crop in particular," Flaten said.

 

Flaten said the good weather has changed the CWB's projection of what quantity and quality of wheat and barley it will have to work with during 2009-10.

 

"The quality of the crop is going to be better than average predictions would have been a couple of weeks ago," he said. "The odds are that we may still have some moisture and frost issues to deal with, but that is likely now going to affect a lower percentage of the crop than we would have expected a couple of weeks ago."

 

Flaten said there is a fine line between having to be cautious in what the CWB can forward sell because of limited supply and being aggressive, when there are ample supplies.

 

While the harvest is far from complete, Flaten said the CWB was in a much more comfortable position then it was a couple of weeks ago and were making offers to customers accordingly.

 

Canada's all wheat production in 2009-10 will be down at 23.614 million tonnes, compared with 28.611 million in 2008-09. However, Flaten said output is still going to exceed consumption, resulting in Canada's wheat supply base increasing a bit.

 

Flaten said the CWB's marketing of durum was proceeding as normal, given the large beginning stocks heading into 2009-10.

 

Sales of malting barley by the CWB had also been on the cautious side up until recently, Flaten said.

 

He said the CWB normally tries to balance its sales of malting barley into the North American and offshore markets, while keeping Canada's domestic maltsters supplied in order to run at capacity.