Farmscape for February 14, 2017

The Executive Director of Winter Cereals Canada reports the bulk of western Canada's winter wheat crop is now moving into the livestock feed market.
Winter wheat acreages increased last fall in Saskatchewan, held steady in Alberta and declined in Manitoba and good snow cover this winter has helped protect the crops that were planted from winter kill.
Jake Davidson, the Executive Director of Winter Cereals Canada, reports an increasing percentage of the winter wheat grown in western Canada is now being sold as feed.

Clip-Jake Davidson-Winter Cereals Canada:
Right now the winter wheat crops tend to be going more into the feed market and more of a general purpose market because that's what the grain companies are buying them for.
Under the old Wheat Board, the Wheat Board promoted winter wheat into the Asian milling markets and so because of its specialty features such as super white flour and so on and that was a big deal.
But the private grain companies are not treating it as a potential high value export crop so it tends to be leaning more into feed.
Protein is not why you buy grain.
The winter wheat crop tends to run in the 10 and a half to 11 protein but has very good starch levels which means the energy levels are good so it makes excellent pig and chicken feed.
Especially with the burgeoning market in the prairies on the soybeans and so on, there's an awful lot of people now processing soybeans, either roasting them or extruding them so protein is not a restricting factor anywhere, easy to get.
So the positive side on the winter wheat crop is a high energy grain source.

Davidson says growers are getting over a dollar more per bushel for winter wheat from pig farmers than they're being offered by the grain companies.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork