StatCan Dec 31 Stocks Report Meets Trade Expectations

Feb 08, 2022

Statistics Canada released its December 31st ending stocks report on Tuesday.

Neil Townsend is Chief Market Analyst with FarmLink Marketing Solutions.

"It's hard to read too much into it, but I mean there are some trade expectations and the only notable one where they were sort of a little bit out of line with what happened was they were higher on the all wheat non-durum number then what the actual number came out at. The number came out lower than they expected, but I would say that was inline with what the production drop was. We had the production drop year on year by 34 per cent for non-durum wheat and stocks were 34 per cent tighter than you would have expected them to be."

Meanwhile, Statistics Canada says as of December 31st, canola stocks were down 43.1% year over year to 7.6 million tonnes, their lowest level since 2007.

"That's certainly well within the line of what we were expecting," commented Townsend. "The bottom line is this, there's seven months left in the marketing year, as of that report, typically we'd be using somewhere around 1.5 million tonnes of canola between domestic usage and export and we have 7.6 million tonnes left. Yes, I think there's been a bit of rationing, certainly on the export side, and to a smaller degree on the domestic side, but I mean it's very, very tight."

On-farm canola stocks fell 50.8% to 5.6 million tonnes, offsetting commercial stocks, which rose 4.3% to 1.9 million tonnes. The decline in on-farm stocks was largely attributable to low total supply.

Despite strong international demand, canola exports fell 43.1% compared with one year earlier.

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.