By Alice McFarlane

Large canaryseed stocks could result in lower seeded acres in 2025

Dec 24, 2024 | 1:42 PM

Canaryseed growers may be waiting a few more years for a return to higher prices.

Chuck Penner with Left Field Commodity research provided the market outlook at the recent Saskatchewan Canaryseed Development Commission annual general meeting.

He said current values are 32 cents a pound with some new crop contracts at 30 cents.

A good-sized crop last year and lower-than-expected sales are keeping prices down.

Mexico has been a bright spot accounting for about half of this crop year’s sales to date but there was no fall shipment out of Thunder Bay. Penner said there will still be a very large ending stock in 2024-25.

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“We haven’t had ending stocks this large for quite a long time. We have these big ending stocks and those don’t tend to go away in just a single year,” Penner said. “They can hang on for a while because you have to reduce production in 2025 and even with reduced production, you’re still carrying in over 100,000 tonnes. You’re going to have sizeable supplies again even for 2025-26.”

Traditionally, canaryseed growers will wait for higher prices because the crop can be stored for multiple years. Penner said there is more canaryseed out there and some of it is available, especially for growers who are more motivated to sell for whatever reason.

“The other reason is that we didn’t have that fall Thunder Bay shipment, so there wasn’t that assembling of 10 to 15 thousand tonnes for that type of a movement and that allowed prices to stay flat,” he said. “Whether we get a little bit of a bump when we get to February or March will depend largely on that Thunder Bay shipment. But with the sizable supplies that we have it’s going to be hard for that price to really rise meaningfully.”

Penner believes that will result in fewer acres of canaryseed being grown in 2025.

“So, how much is it going drop? Are we going drop to below 240,000 acres or can it go even lower? We haven’t been that low in a long time and I don’t, off top my head, recall how far back, but I think the natural response will be for a cutback in acres.”

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alice.mcfarlane@pattisonmedia.com

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