Canadian Special Crop Forecasts Trimmed

VANCOUVER - Oct 5/05 - SNS -- Canadian specialty crop production will end up smaller than initially expected, judging from the latest estimates from Statistics Canada.

The biggest decrease is in the projected size of this year's field pea harvest, which dropped 224,800 metric tons (MT) from the August forecast to just under three million MT. This is down from last year's record 3.38 million MT harvest, but well above the recent 10-year average crop of just 2.1 million MT.

Statistics Canada will not release national production data for all specialty crops until it releases its final crop estimates in December. However, it does provide provincial level data for most special crops in their major producing provinces.

Based on this data, it looks like lentil, dry edible bean, canaryseed, and mustard output will be lower than initially expected; while this year's chickpea and sunflower crops could end up better than expected. However, harvest conditions have not been good since the survey was taken and more land than expected could be left unharvested in Saskatchewan.

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