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US Flax Output Up Sharply; Lentil, Pea Crops Larger

Just like north of the border, American producers had a big bounce back year for flax production. 

In its first estimate of the 2022 crop on Thursday, the USDA pegged American flax output at 120,400 tonnes, up a major 58% from the drought-reduced 2021 crop of just 93,156 tonnes. At 244,000 tonnes, US flax harvested area was down 10% on the year, but that reduction was more than offset by a 7.5-bu improvement in the average yield to 17.6 bu/acre. 

In Canada, flax production this past year amounted to 473,175 tonnes, an increase of almost 37%. Harvested area was down 22.7% but the average yield jumped 10.6 bu to 24.2 bu/acre. 

Meanwhile, the 2022 US pea and lentil crops were bigger than originally forecast as well. 

Today’s USDA annual crop summary put the lentil crop at 274,500 tonnes, up from the earlier estimate of 242,550 and 61% above the 2021 crop. Harvested area was actually reduced, but the average yield was revised way up 912 lbs/acre, compared to the previous estimate of 766 lbs and only 606 lbs in 2021.

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Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators