Farms.com Commodity Research Team says Ontario farmers to plant a record acreage of corn in 2022.
By Andrew Joseph, Farms.com; Photo by Christophe Maertens on Unsplash
Per a recently conducted farmer survey, the Farms.com Risk Management team said that Ontario farmers will plant 6.271 million acres of corn, soybean and wheat combined in 2022.
While the overall acreage is lower than that of 2021’s numbers (6.3 million) and 2019’s record of 6.4 million, the team’s research suggests that 2022 will see a record planting of corn in Ontario of 2.27 million acres.
This projected number for corn is, according to the Risk Management team, 5.8 percent higher than 2021’s numbers per Statistics Canada, and higher than the five-year of 2.163 million acres.
The Risk Management Team’s data also suggests that Ontario farmers will plant more soybeans—up by 5.02 percent over 2021 numbers, and with over 3-million acres predicted, it will be the second-highest planting since 2019.
Moe Agostino, Chief Commodity Strategist at Farms.com Risk Management said he is, “not surprised to hear that seed companies are reporting higher corn seed sales. But higher corn acres are being driven by record high yields from last year—Agricorp’s final yield for 21/22 was 200 bpa (bushels per acre)—and higher prices.”
Agostino and the Risk Management team also feel that input availability will not be a problem in Ontario for the 2022 planting season, “But we are missing nitrogen supplies that need to be available for the side dress season in May/June unless you want to pay a 35 percent tariff.”
Ontario only has two-thirds of the capacity required to store all farmer fertilizer needs, according to Mosaic. Between three to eight cargoes of nitrogen have been sourced from Algeria, Nigeria, Egypt and the Middle East for the side dress season during May and June—fertilizer that prior to its invasion of Ukraine, would have been sourced via the Russian Federation.
According to Stephen Denys, Director of Business Management, Maizex Seeds, “The price of corn is keeping up with input costs and is still making corn attractive to plant. Even though prices are dictating to plant more corn acres, the heavy clay regions of Essex, Lambton and Haldimand could easily switch to soybean acres if we get a wet planting season.”
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