Canada: Barley move into feed channels to be curtailed by large corn imports from the US

Canada’s larger barley crop in 2023/24 should see more of the grain move into feed channels than the year before, but domestic usage will remain curtailed by large corn imports from the United States, Canadian Cattlemen reported on December 22.

Recently revised supply/demand tables from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada raised the forecast for domestic barley usage in the current crop year to 6.155 million tonnes. That compares with an earlier forecast of 5.471 million tonnes. If realized, that would be up by roughly 200,000 tonnes from the previous year.

Meanwhile, AAFC lowered their estimate for corn imports to 2.500 million tonnes from an earlier forecast of 2.800 million tonnes. That would still be up from the 2.147 million tonnes imported in 2022/23, but well below the record 6.141 million tonnes of corn imported in 2021/22 when Canadian feed supplies were decimated by drought.

Prior to the drought year Canadian corn imports had rarely topped two million tonnes, with a five-year average of about 1.7 million tonnes annually from 2016/17 through 2020/21.

U.S. Department of Agriculture export data for the week ended Dec. 14 shows that Canada has already imported 375,900 tonnes of U.S. corn during the marketing year that began Sept. 1. That compares with only 99,100 tonnes of accumulated imports at the same time the previous year. There are an additional 434,700 tonnes of corn on the books slated to move later in the crop year – roughly double the previous year’s outstanding sales at this time.

Delivered barley into southern Alberta was priced as high as C$325 per tonne range, according to Prairie Ag Hotwire data yesterday. That’s down by about C$15 per tonne at the top end over the past month.

22 December, 2023