Record Specialty Crop Seedings

OTTAWA - Jun 29/04 - SNS -- Specialty crop seeded area in Canada appears to have ended up at a record 7.87 million acres, judging from data contained in this year's Statistics Canada seeded area estimates.

Three additional records were broken, with western Canadian farmers planting a record area to field peas, lentils and canaryseed. Surprisingly, the data from Statistics Canada reveals Canadian dry edible bean seedings were increased above last year as growers responded to higher prices and a increasing competition among processors for their crops.

The only specialty crops to decline were chickpeas, mustard and sunflower. But, the degree of decline was much less than expected, with growers responding to stronger chickpea markets by maintaining seeded area close to last year and only trimming mustard seed plantings because of a relatively good price performance across much of the 2003-04 marketing year.

"In some cases, farmers may be planting pulse crops due to pre-determined rotational requirements. Diversification of crop production over the last few years has led to increases in pulse crop areas," Statistics Canada commented in its report.

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