Early Market Highs?

VANCOUVER - Sep 8/07 - SNS -- Processors are reporting good deliveries against production contracts and deferred delivery contracts with growers. With markets rising, nearly all processors have gone out of their way to accept off-combine delivery of product bought from growers earlier in the year.

This, combined with off-combine deliveries of presold oilseeds plus milling and durum wheat in western Canada, is generating important opening season cash flow for growers. But, growers are proving ornery when it comes to selling additional product. The implication is that grower holding will force markets higher than would otherwise the case during the fall delivery period. Growers seem to be hoping last season's pricing pattern repeats itself, with markets making their highs for all specialty crops during the last half of the 2007-08 marketing year.

STAT Market Research's newly created Canadian specialty crop dealer price index reveals there is no pattern as to when prices for the industry as a whole peak. Between the 2000-01 and 2006-07 marketing years, prices never established their season highs during the same key shipping period two seasons in a row.

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