THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2011
VOL. 89 | NO. 42 | $3.75
CARVED DESIGNS
SERVING WESTERN CANADIAN FARM FAMILIES SINCE 1923
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MANITOBA CRAFTERS
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WWW.PRODUCER.COM
TRAINED SHEEP
BARLEY | LOW PRODUCTION, HIGH EXPECTATIONS
Barley expected to make comeback Acres fall sharply | Recovery attributed to supply-demand or anticipated loss of CWB single desk BY SEAN PRATT SASKATOON NEWSROOM
Canadian barley acres may finally have bottomed out, according to officials in the grain and livestock industries. “We do not have enough barley around to sustain our local industries right now,” said Bruce Burnett, the Canadian Wheat Board’s director of weather and market analysis. He expects feed barley prices to rise to encourage more acres in the ground in 2012. “We’re going to need to find some more feed grains somehow and the one way to do that is for prices to go up,” said Burnett. “We’ll see probably a stronger barley market at the end of the year.”
Bill Jameson, chair of the National Cattle Feeders Association, also anticipates a reversal in what has been a precipitous decline in barley plantings. A crop that used to consistently occupy 11 to 13 million acres of prairie farmland in the 1990s and early 2000s has plummeted below seven million acres in each of the last two crop years. Jameson thinks the Canadian Wheat Board is partly to blame for the crop’s steady demise. He contends that young farmers with big operations don’t like dealing with the CWB and have switched to growing pulses and special crops. Cattle feeders believe the crop’s fortunes will change come Aug. 1, 2012, when the board loses its single
desk powers and the crop starts to attract research dollars from some of the major players in the seed development industry. “The general consensus is that it should help to possibly increase barley acreage,” said Jameson. He expects prices will rise once growers are allowed to freely export feed barley to the United States, which would be a double-edged sword for cattle producers. “On one hand we expect barley to increase in price, which is probably a bit of a detriment to the cattle industry. However, we also feel the acreage will increase,” said Jameson. Burnett doesn’t see a direct link between Canada’s single desk marketing system and barley’s flagging popularity.
“You can blame the wheat board or you can blame whatever. I would tend to think this is probably highly related to the price of oilseeds and other competitive crops,” he said. Barley is grown in the same regions of the Prairies as canola and is having a tough time competing with $12 or $13 a bushel prices for the oilseed. Competitive pressures are also slashing U.S. barley acres, which are less than one-third what they were two decades ago, tumbling to 2.6 million acres in 2011 from 8.2 million acres in 1990. The decline has been particularly stark in North Dakota, where the crop has lost ground to soybeans and corn. SEE BARLEY COMEBACK, PAGE 2
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u|xhHEEJBy00001pzYv/:# OCTOBER 20, 2011 Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Box 2500, Saskatoon, SK. S7K 2C4 The Western Producer is published in Saskatoon by Western Producer Publications, which is owned by GVIC Communications Inc. Publisher, Larry Hertz Publications Mail Agreement No. 40069240; Registration No. 10676
A flock of sheep stopped for a rest along the Canadian National Railway line west of Kenville, Man., recently. Just out of sight is a sheep dog, which kept everyone organized and together. | EDWIN CROOK PHOTO