The extremely tight supply has prompted rumours that Canadian elevators will need to increase their wheat basis levels.
However, final yield data from Sask Ag had HRS wheat at 30 bushels per acre, which was 3 bu/acre higher than their previous Sept. 6 estimate.
Consequentially, the updated Sask Ag estimate is in-line with Stats Canada’s Sept. 14 30.3 bushel per acre estimate for spring wheat.
This means that of the 15.3 million mt of spring wheat produced in Canada in 2021, 6 million mt, or 39% were produced in SK.
On the other hand, Sask Ag left their final durum wheat yield unchanged from their previous estimate at 19 bushels per acre.
Stats Canada is currently using a 24.4 bushel per acre number for SK.
If Stats Canada’s acreage number for SK of 4.4 million acres is correct, the smaller yield reported by SK Ag would cause production in SK to fall an additional 655k mt to 2.89 million mt.
Meantime, in shipping week 9, Canadian spring wheat exports were 126.1k mt for a season total of 2.47 million mt, 66% (-1.28 million mt) of last year’s amount.
While durum exports, in shipping week 9, were 22.1k mt for a season total of 487.1k mt, 23% (110.7k mt) more than last year.
About prices, durum wheat was sold for Cdn$/bu 21.25 in Central SK last week.
According to StatsCan, Canada exported 1.542 million mt of wheat during the month of August.
This is down 25% from last year.
Japan was the top destination for Canadian wheat importing 186,041 mt, an 18% increase from last year.
StatsCan data, in contrast, shows that 28% more Canadian durum was exported this August compared to the same time last year.
Most of the year-over-year increase can be attributed to a 70,205 mt sale to the US and a 59,572 mt sale to Belgium.
US imports are three times higher than last year and reflect the small durum harvest in the US.
The primary destination for Canadian durum was to Morocco whose imports are consistent with last years.
There was a notable decrease in exports to Italy, which imported just 22% of last year’s amount.
EU durum production has increased from 7.22 million mt to 8.01 million mt (+11%).
Durum production in Italy has increased from 3.89 million mt in 2020 to 4.32 million mt in 2021 (+11%).
The EU generally imports between 1.5 to 3 million mt annually from all origins, and between 600k mt and 2 million mt of durum annually from Canada.
In this context, Canada will not have enough tonnage to maintain the export pace to the EU of the past two years, especially given the increased demand by the US this crop year.
