Markets Moved By Crop Progress Reports

VANCOUVER - Sep 12/14 - SNS -- Interim crop progress reports are not normally as anticipated as have been those of the past week, with importers, exporters and competing traders eager to see the contents of this week's crop progress reports for Saskatchewan and India.

India's kharif seeding progress report is seen as critical to helping understand potential demand from that country and the region through the balance of the marketing year. Saskatchewan's is seen as critical to determining how much product will be available to meet that demand.

Seeding of this year's kharif or monsoon season crops maintained its slow pace during the past week, with India's farmers planting just 197,000 hectares of pulses. This lifted the total land in pulses to 9.921 million hectares, down from 10.376 million last year and the recent five-year average of 10.492 million by the second week of September.

Seeding normally slows at this time of year. On average 97% of pulses which will be planted are in the ground by this time in September. Though placing bets on how many pulses will be planted once seeding wraps up could be foolish, it seems more certain area will not push far past 10 million hectares.

Harvest progress reported by Saskatchewan's Agriculture Department was pitiful. Only a third of the province's lentils and two-thirds of its field peas were in the bin as of September 8. During the previous five years, an average of 4% of the lentils and 77% of the peas had been harvested by the end of the first week of September. During the previous three years, that number jumped to 76% for lentils and 87% for peas.

Progress was equally poor for other special crops. This year's mustard seed harvest was just 16% complete, compared to recent five-year average of 39% and 44% at this time last year. Canaryseed is normally one of the last crops harvested. As a result, markets were not worried to discover just 1% of the crop was in the bin, compared to the recent five-ear average of 3%.