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By Alice McFarlane

Agriculture Roundup for Friday May 8, 2020

May 8, 2020 | 9:27 AM

A new Statistics Canada survey indicated Saskatchewan farmers will seed more oats and wheat this spring but less barley, canola, and dry peas.

The March survey said spring wheat acreage will be steady at 8.7 million acres while durum will jump 6.7 per cent.

Oats will be up less than one per cent while canola will be down 2.3 per cent to 11 million acres.

Barley will fall to three million acres, down 4.7 per cent and peas will drop two per cent to 2.3 million acres.

Flax jumps two per cent while mustard drops four per cent from last year.

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Canadian livestock groups said producers are suffering after COVID-19 outbreaks led to a series of closures and slowdowns at meat-processing plants across the country.

A backlog of animals waiting to be processed has cattle producers paying more to maintain their inventory.

An official with the Canadian Pork Council said the backlog in the pork industry is over 140,000. Since hogs are ready for market sooner than cattle, the situation is getting worse.

Gary Stordy said one producer had to euthanize 200 animals, and it was a blow for people in the industry.

Canadian Meat Council spokesperson Chris White said there is a backlog on both the cattle and pork side, and it’s not going to improve until plants are at full capacity.

Dennis Laycraft from the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association said the beef backlog has hit 100,000 cattle, and the industry could lose a half billion dollars by the end of June.

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The Alberta government has made a commitment to match AgriRecovery funding for a set-aside program to support Alberta’s beef industry.

The federal government announced an initial investment in agriculture and agri-food of $252 million. The announcement included $125 million in disaster relief funding through AgriRecovery with $50 million specifically dedicated to the beef industry for a set-aside program.

The cost sharing program will include $26 million federally and $16 million provincially, distributed as per head payments to cover the costs of maintaining market-ready cattle until the backlog of inventory can be cleared.

Alberta currently has over 100,000 market-ready cattle waiting to be processed and that number continues to increase.

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A new mustard variety has the potential to hit 40 bushels per acre.

Sask Mustard executive director Rick Mitzel said AAC Hybrid Brown 18 presents a great opportunity for growers and the industry.

The variety has a 20 per cent yield increase compared to open pollinated varieties.

Mitzel said this will allow growers the ability to increase their profitability per acre with mustard.

The new variety is now available for sale from select dealers in Canada.

Saskatchewan producers are the world’s largest mustard exporters.

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alice.mcfarlane@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @AliceMcF