Hursh Consulting & Communications Inc.

Would you like to go to world’s No. 1 farm equipment show? Agritechnica is held every second year in Hanover, Germany. The next show is the middle of November.  I’m working with STEP, the Saskatchewan Trade & Export Partnership to make the trip more attainable for interested Canadian producers. Travelling as a group will provide travel and accommodation advantages. Plus, it’ll be a great networking experience. A number of ag journalists are likely to tag along with us. There will be a couple days of touring in the Hanover area including the Class manufacturing plant, a seed production farm and a couple bioenergy facilities. And there will be four days to attend Agritechnica. Representatives from Agritechnica held a show preview during the Western Canada Farm Progress Show in Regina. Agritechnica is going to be bigger than ever and there will be more Canadian companies in attendance than ever before. Here’s a link to the PowerPoint presentations used during the preview:

http://www.agritechnica.com/preview_event_canada_2011.html

 If you’d like to know more about the group travel plans and the cost involved, just shoot me an email – kevin@hursh.ca.

Durum prices have nowhere to go but up. Bruce Burnett, the director of weather and market surveillance for the Canadian Wheat Board spoke to a farmer meeting yesterday at the Western Canada Farm Progress Show in Regina. Burnett says only about 40 per cent of the North Dakota durum crop has been seeded due to the same wet conditions plaguing southeastern Saskatchewan and much of Manitoba. Here in Western Canada, the durum acreage is higher than last year, but not nearly as high as the seeding intentions estimate from Statistics Canada. North Africa has a good durum crop, but they’ve been receiving a lot of rain in their harvest period and that is expected to downgrade quality. Burnett says that on the international market, durum is running at a $4 a bushel premium to spring wheat. In the May Pool Return Outlook, the price projection for top grade new crop durum was in the $8 a bushel range after deducting average Saskatchewan freight and handling. Look for a substantial increase in the June PRO. I’m Kevin Hursh.

Farmers in southeastern Saskatchewan are in trouble. Only a limited amount of crop has been seeded, time is running out and rain continues to fall. The crop report that came out on May 26 estimated provincial seeding progress at 54 per cent as of May 23, up from just 23 in the report for the previous week. The five year average for May 23 is 72 per cent. At 54 per cent, progress is on par with the spring of 2010. But remember, last year saw millions of acres go unseeded in Saskatchewan. Whether the situation ends up as bad as last year remains to be seen. Certainly the geographic distribution of unseeded acres will be different this time. The problem is across the south and especially in the southeast. In the crop districts that include Estevan, Oxbow, Moosomin and Grenfell, seeding progress is estimated at only six to nine per cent. The crop district around Weyburn has only 19 per cent seeded. The next lowest is the crop district around Yorkton at 28 per cent, followed by Assiniboia in the south central region at 33 to 35 per cent.  The southwest corner of the province is uncharacteristically wet and slow. Producers in the Maple Creek to Shaunavon area are often done seeding by the middle of May. This year, due to heavy snow over the winter and continual rains this spring, seeding is at only 37 per cent. Amazingly, there’s more seeding progress (39 per cent) in the crop district that includes Foam Lake and Wadena than there is in the southwest corner. The northern grain belt has had excellent seeding progress ranging from 62 per cent in the northeast corner around Hudson Bay and Tisdale to over 80 per cent west of North Battleford. Progress is actually well ahead of the five-year average across the north. Since the Ministry of Agriculture numbers are for the week ending May 23, progress is now well ahead of these numbers in many regions. Unfortunately, there has been limited progress in the regions that are furthest behind. For producers in the wet areas, it’s a time to nervously watch the weather forecasts and the calendar. The seeding window is closing quickly. I’m Kevin Hursh.

Every growing season is unique and brings something you’ve never seen before. Our farmyard is on the edge of a saline slough called Boggy Lake. The “lake” has been dry most of the past 20 years. Often we’re driving across it by this point in the spring. This year, the lake is higher than I’ve ever seen and along the edge, particularly in my farmyard, the fish flies are nothing short of amazing. On a quiet day, they form columns into the sky that you can see from a mile away. They’re often so thick that it looks like a dust storm or a dirty blizzard. Thankfully, they don’t bite, but you need to keep your mouth closed walking across the yard. The grass looks black rather than green due to the flies clinging to the ground. The population built up quickly going from a few in sheltered grassy areas to numbers that are in epic proportions. I suspect the population may crash as quickly as it built. Unfortunately, the mosquito population is probably going to keep building and building. Is anyone else experiencing a fish fly invasion this year? I’m Kevin Hursh.

I love the seeding monitor I installed this spring. I’ve been threatening to do it for a couple years, but the cost and the hassle of installation had thwarted those plans until this year. I’m sure there are lots of good blockage monitoring systems, but I went with Agtron, a Saskatoon company I’ve done some work with. I set mine up so that each of the seed runs is monitored along with one run on each of fertilizer distribution towers. As usual, we had a lot of blockage problems with the kabuli chickpeas, but now we knew just which run had a problem. There was also a problem with fertilizer lumps that we caught much sooner due to having the Agtron. As well, a hose to a distribution tower came off for some reason and we knew about it right away. There were also a number of unexpected benefits. With increased confidence that everything was working, we spent less time crawling under the drill to check each run. We ran the air speed a bit lower and that should have reduced seed cracking. On crops like canola and mustard, you can seed a long ways after the bin monitor says the tank is empty. With the monitors of the seed runs, you know just when the seed tank actually goes empty. The system allows you to display the pounds of seed and pounds of fertilizer you’re applying, so any major deviation in the numbers will alert you to problems. For instance, bridging of material in the tank could drop the application rate, but it might not be enough to trigger alarms if product is still dribbling out. I hate looking at a field with seeding misses all summer. This summer, I shouldn’t have to. I’m Kevin Hursh.

The Canadian Wheat Board’s single desk function has had more lives than a cat, but its days are now numbered. All the signals coming from the new Conservative majority government indicate that marketing choice will be delivered on both barley and wheat. There’s no use going through all the acrimonious debate again. Change, for better or worse, is coming. Can a voluntary Canadian Wheat Board serve a useful purpose? There are various opinions on that question, but discussions on the future role of the board are now more valuable than repeating the well-worn arguments for and against the marketing monopoly. The number of farmers who want marketing choice may be 40, 50 or 60 per cent of the total. It all depends who you ask and how you phrase the question. Whatever the exact percentage, it’s clear that a large number of producers want to sell their own wheat, durum and barley. Many absolutely despise the board. Even if the single desk is the best approach, it isn’t right to impose this approach when support is so lacking. The CWB has excellent people and has represented Canada admirably in markets around the world. That expertise needs to be retained in some form. That’s what we should be discussing. The other debate is now academic. By the way, these are my opinions and not necessarily those of the organizations in which I’m involved. I’m Kevin Hursh.

It has been many years since I first started doing a daily radio commentary. Some of you who read this report on the website or receive the report by email may not realize that this is the text version of a report than runs on various Saskatchewan radio stations. April 29 marks my last radio report. I will still make postings to the website and those who subscribe will still receive the comments for free, but the postings won’t come with the same regularity. As the saying goes, I have too many irons in the fire. I need to cut back somewhere to allow time for other consulting and journalism projects as well as farming. As many of you know, I serve as executive director for the Inland Terminal Association of Canada, the Saskatchewan Mustard Development Commission and the Canaryseed Development Commission of Saskatchewan. I also serve as editor for Farm Credit Canada’s bi-monthly magazine called AgriSuccess. Reluctantly, I’ve made the decision to discontinue the daily radio commentary. That will mean changes in the on-line postings. If I’ve had a bad day in the field or a good day on a beach in Jamaica, there may not be a report. The reports can now be shorter or longer as warranted and they will come at different times of the day. As always, please feel free to shoot me a return email to let me know your thoughts and what’s happening in your world. I’m Kevin Hursh.

I put about 1,200 kilometers on my truck the past couple days on a road trip from southwest Saskatchewan all the way up to Viking, Alberta and back. Along the way, I passed by Leader, Alsask, Marengo, Kindersley, Rosetown and Swift Current on the Saskatchewan side and Oyen, Hanna and Killam on the Alberta side. The highways had an amazing number of air drills being towed to new owners. Some looked new, while others looked like private purchases or auction sale acquisitions. In yard after yard, air drills were hooked to tractors as producers make sure that everything is ready to head to the field. I imagine that a lot of GPS subscriptions are being activated these days. There were still remnants of snow banks in tree rows and most areas have lots of sloughs. There was some field activity. There was a high clearance sprayer near Kyle, although that may have just been someone working on settings. Also near Kyle, a Valmar spreader was going in a field. North of Swift Current, manure trucks were busy hauling and spreading from a cattle operation. It wasn’t until I got back to around Cabri that I actually encountered someone seeding – a neighbour just a few miles from my place. If the weather holds, there will gradually be more activity in the field. I’m Kevin Hursh.

Statistics Canada spent a lot of money doing its Seeding Intentions Report released yesterday, but the report has limited value. A total of 12,600 farmers were surveyed at the end of March to come up with the numbers. The report seems to assume that we will suddenly have a normal year and all the acres we want to seed will be seeded. Thus, summerfallow acreage in Western Canada is forecast to drop from 11.6 million acres last year to just over 5 million acres. A lot of those extra acres that we’ll magically be able to seed are supposed to go into canola. A record 19.2 million acres of canola is expected, up 14 per cent from last year. Saskatchewan, which has the greatest area affected by water, is expected to increase canola acreage by 25 per cent – a whopping two million acres. The actual seeded area will depend on the weather over the next month, but a lot of analysts are discounting the canola prediction. Here are some of the other numbers. Western Canadian durum acreage is expected to increase by 60 per cent after a record low year in 2010. Oats are up 39 per cent, barley is up 13 per cent, field peas are down 20 per cent, while flax is up 30 per cent. In crops where Saskatchewan dominates production, lentils are expected to be down 19 per cent in the province, mustard down 28 per cent and canaryseed up by 8 per cent. In my mind, those numbers have more credibility than the canola estimate. I’m Kevin Hursh.

Here’s an early season test of weather forecasts. On Monday, the Environment Canada forecast sounded quite favourable. There was 30 to 60 per cent chance of some showers for some of the days later in the week for a number of locations, but it didn’t sound like very much precipitation. By contrast, World Weather Inc. issued a forecast Monday morning that sounded quite ominous. While calling for a pleasant start to the week with a few scattered showers, the Kansas-based forecasting service was calling for a winter storm to slam the Prairies later in the week. The storm, moving from Alberta across Saskatchewan and Manitoba was forecast to start as rain and then switch to snow with significant amounts of both over a large region. World Weather Inc. did note that this was an early forecast and there was still time for the projected path and the precipitation amounts to be adjusted. It’ll be interesting to see today’s forecasts from both Environment Canada and World Weather Inc. A lot of producers subscribe to World Weather Inc. reports by Sean Rocheford and Drew Lerner and they’ve proven to be quite accurate in past years. Here’s hoping this time they’re wrong. A storm is the last thing we need right now. I’m Kevin Hursh.