Spring Seeding Plans

[lakenheath]

Spring will soon be creeping up on us. I haven't finalized a seeding plan, but I'm thinking I should have one in place fairly soon. Lot of guys jumping on the chickpea wagon this year (paying up to 90 cents a pound for the big ones). I seed India has increase seed acres for chickpeas quite a bit. Chickpeas scream risk to me (high risk high reward I guess).

Americans are increasing peas acres this year (greens I believe). So yellow peas might still pencil in if price come up a bit. Seeing as they are fairly cheap to grow.

Hopefully more corn will be funnel to these supposed ethonal plants in the states and free up some room for other crops to fill the void.

Spring wheat is rallying a bit, but how many times have we heard that in the past and the PRO's fail to respond. Snowbird did well for us last year for cashflow, maybe it can bring us a return this year.

I still get angry when I think of opportunity crops like Snowbird where premiums are mucked in the CWB 'pool". Last year ending stocks of Snowbird are nil and yet we get paid basically the Hard Red price.

Durum is not attractive right now. The bins are overflowing this carry-over and the price is in the tank.

Lentils are probably the biggest question mark. They have been such a good crop for people in our area over the past 10 years. They fit nicely into the rotation, but if price levels remain they are a high rick crop to grow.

[dalek]

Some in Ontario are now booking wheat for 2007 delivery. Still have no idea what we'll plant this spring, we have winter wheat in, probably will plant enough corn for feed and some soybeans but I think we'll be planting a lot of oats/peas/triticale mix for forage. Not a lot of optimism for corn, particularly now that we learn that our Ontario corn buyers are so cheap they have a load of African corn sitting in Montreal so they can circumvent the countervail without having to raise their bids in Ontario.

[Ron]

Nothing looks good enough to get serious yet for me. Thinking $6.00 Dec canola is better than $2.20 feed wheat but it depends on the FPC options (I have been screwed by the PRO before so I really like to lock in a price as firmly as I can with the board).
I hear 'N' should be same as fall price (or lower). Wait and see I guess

[TOM4CWB]

Ron;

With all the Board/Non-Board feed swaps going on; why would farmers sell to the CWB?

Every tonne of feed wheat that get's swapped out to the domestic market... just drags the pool accounts lower, or am I wrong?

How much do the grain co's pay for board feed wheat? $1.60/bu? or less because the CWB owes huge favours for other messes?

[Jagfarms]

What about Desi Chickpea's anybody thinking of seeding any of them? We have some some desi's left from a few years back and we were thinking of seeding a few acres of them. What does the Desi market look like.

How many Kabuli acres do you think will go in this year? I thinking around 300,000 acres. It is hard finding good seed right now and to know what variety to grow. I was looking for some Frontier seed but it is all sold out at 75cents/lb. I found some Xena seed and I can get some Yuma's so now I have to decide if I do seed any which to go with. I can get the Yuma's a lot cheaper and they are more disease resistant but I heard from some people they are harder to market and lots of times they downgrade because of splits.

I thinking it could be a year to late for the Kabuli market what are your opinions? There is some new crop price contracts out for 10mm Kabulis at 35cents/lb for the first 5 bushels an acre for #1s. The only trouble is we have to grow #1's first.


Jason

[TOM4CWB]

Barley will likely be the first to go out of the CWB "single desk".

How many are planning to grow barley?