Statistics Canada's Canola Estimate is Puzzling! Industry and Farmers?

[SASKFARMER3]

Record yields were achieved in some areas of the eastern Prairies, while in areas of the central and western Prairies, some acres were parched with a lack of moisture and hot weather that will certainly lead to debate over Wednesday's Statistics Canada canola production estimate based on November producer surveys, says DTN's Cliff Jamieson.

The report pegs 2017 production at a record 22.313 million tonnes, up 8.7% or 1.7 million from the estimate of 2016 production and is higher than the highest pre-report estimate reported by media.

Given a 1.3 million carry-in, crop-year supplies would now be in the vicinity of 23.6 million t, with current demand estimates pegged at 20 million based on AAFC's 11 million export projection and 9 million crush projection. Latest data points to cumulative disappearance slightly behind the steady pace needed to reach this target. The latest Statistics Canada estimate may suggest that a big whopping increase in ending stocks are in store, the first year-over-year increase in stocks seen in four years.

The curious part is that the market action is not reflecting the bearishness of the data presented.

Funny thing about the whole report is yes some areas had excellent crops but looking back at previous big hitting years the flooded areas of the east had a average and the big hitters new crop areas had massive crops.

Math.

Funny other thing some in our area actually have 90% of their Canola out of yard out of Bins out of Elevator and probably out of Coast. So maybe thats the interesting thing.

[SASKFARMER3]

Oh yea and Manitoba seeded less acreage and Sask added lots of Soy so Where is the acres. My flooded areas are ready to seed in 2018 but i went around all those in 2017. Yes Cut end to end but CatTails dont really count.

[ajl]

Stats can needs to put the wacky tobacky away, or better yet find new jobs. Combined with unseeded in AB, there is just not that much canola out thefe as many on here have been saying for a long time.

[farmaholic]

Ours yielded about half of last year..... and not a bit over half.... under half!

$12/bu last summer. And we're already at some $11.50(plus) bids for further out.

Ya....

What's Kinger's saying about 50/50 either way.

Edit: Sorry folks.... that was delivered to a crush plant,,, of which I have none in my backyard.

[SASKFARMER3]

Hey i know of one BTO that is down to 25% left most would shit if they knew that amount. Then the conversation with two neighbours at the shop the other day. 95 and 90% gone.

Ah yea it was big.

[Sheepwheat]

Millions of added acres in the wet zone. 50 bushel yields instead of 6. Sorry, but this explains a lot. The good old canola region, which had suffered for years because of flooding and saturation, came back on stream with more typical production. Backyarditis can be troublesome at times.

[farmaholic]

Millions of added acres in the wet zone. 50 bushel yields instead of 6. Sorry, but this explains a lot. The good old canola region, which had suffered for years because of flooding and saturation, came back on stream with more typical production. Backyarditis can be troublesome at times.

Backyarditis....yup. if you dig back I did say I need to remember not everyone suffered the same fate as us! But the south did get spanked. But I guess the "traditional" canola growing area more than made up for it then.

Same as when you were drowning. ...the typically dry south was basking in glory....everyone gets their turn.

[4GFarms]

We are about 50% sold and thinking of dumping the rest. Will buy paper in exchange for physical stock.

[bigzee]

By the look of your pic SF3 would think that’s a min 50 bu crop. I know of a guy at Melville who had 55 plus. Seems to me your area all the way into Manitoba had huge crops.
I look over plot data from all canola company’s, who gets farmers to trial varieties seems to me there were some very high numbers. This tells me farmers themselves had huge yields.
Where it was dry the trials showed low yields.
Count yourself luck to raise the crop you did. I know you want $12 for you canola, we all do especially the ones that were in the drought and had less than half what you did.
I recall you giving your Stats Can your yields, why you did you do this?

[Kinger]

Ours yielded about half of last year..... and not a bit over half.... under half!

$12/bu last summer. And we're already at some $11.50(plus) bids for further out.

Ya....

What's Kinger's saying about 50/50 either way.

Edit: Sorry folks.... that was delivered to a crush plant,,, of which I have none in my backyard.

$11.50 was out there for like May/June delivery into elevators last week when futures were higher.

Statscan number is a bit higher than what im think but not by that much. As you go north to Saskatoon, north battleford etc acres were up dramatically this year. Some guys didn't get everything seeded way up north but I think enough to offset overall yield loses.

Also Manitoba did plant a lot of soybeans this year but they also did lots of canola too. Everyone was sick of wheat so they went to everything that wasn't wheat. Which in Manitoba is only really canola and soybeans. Not much for pulses grown in the ol Keystone.

Genuinely sorry about your canola though. Hopefully does better next year.

Palm oil is breaking hard right now too if anyone here watches it. Likely compounding with the last statscan report.

Not to toot my own horn but a few weeks ago I was thinking there would be some weakness in canola dropping down to $500 or under futures in the nearby. Currently $505 for Jan right now, so i was kinda right.

I wasn't expecting elevator basis to get better this quickly though. -15 to -20 is a pretty nice basis. Crush is even nicer right now if you have one nearby. Some do offer picked up bids as well. Just make sure the trucking spread is reasonable sometimes cheaper to do it yourself or pay someone directly to do it.

I still think we will see some decent upside farther out in the year. April/May/June. Looking at historical charts that's the most volatile time of the year.

Or i'm wrong and futures go up $15/mt today.

50/50 either way.

[farming101]

The curious part is that the market action is not reflecting the bearishness of the data presented.

One thought is at this stage in the marketing year the buyers don't know and no one can afford to be wrong betting on a bearish ending stocks scenario. Risk will get squared away as time goes by

Or maybe crop insurance production numbers are starting to leak out

[sumdumguy]

It would be good to know how Stats Can compiles their statistics. How much manipulation and massaging do they do to farmer-submitted stats. It could be same as the manipulation of temperature records. By the way, it's snowing in southern Texas. Very suspicious with fake news, fake stats, fake everything.

[bucket]

Sumdumguy



They collect acre data around plots and apply plot yield .....is that enough massaging?

[Guest]

It would be good to know how Stats Can compiles their statistics. How much manipulation and massaging do they do to farmer-submitted stats. It could be same as the manipulation of temperature records. By the way, it's snowing in southern Texas. Very suspicious with fake news, fake stats, fake everything.

and not a word of the snow on trump news (that's what I call ctv now) or anywhere else, wtf ??? that should be news ? no ?

[Agvocate]

If you have interest in how they come up with the numbers you can go to the statistics Canada website and read the methodology. Or you can just make up what you think they do. That said the yield they are using seems pretty reasonable, and in line with most reports that were circulating prior to the report. The extra production is coming from higher seeded acres (22,997,100) and a very high harvested acres number of 22,896,300 which is 99.56% of the seeded acres. That seems a bit high, typical S&D's use 98% as a plug and then adjust in the fall depending on weather. There should be less than 2% abandonment but almost 100% of seeded being harvested is aggressive. For the last decade however the final production has been increased from the Dec report the following summer 9 of 10 years once crush and export numbers were known. Perhaps they are trying to get in front of that on this go around. Either way it may be slightly high but certainly not unrealistic. The demand is there to use it so the large crop isn't massively bearish. Front month has been chopping $20 either side of $500/MT for 2 years, don't expect these numbers change that.