Canadian Winter Wheat Gains in Popularity Among U.S. Livestock Operations

By Bruce Cochrane

The executive director of Winter Cereals Canada reports an increasing level of interest among U.S. livestock operations in Canadian winter wheat.

The number of winter wheat acres planted in Manitoba and Saskatchewan last fall fell by about two thirds but the crop appears to have come through the winter in good shape.

Winter Cereals Canada executive director Jake Davidson says, domestically winter wheat is very popular as a feed wheat, for ethanol production and for milling, it's popular on the export market for making steam bread and a significant feed market has developed in the U.S.

Jake Davidson-Winter Cereals Canada:
This kind of started with the loss of the single desk and the Wheat Board and the coincidence that the same year the United States had a terrible drought and they were quite short on feed grains.

Some of the people or companies that had been not really interested in winter wheat in previous years took it upon themselves and they jumped into the market and they exported very large quantities of Canadian winter wheat, feed wheat into the southern United Sates and the people down there, they really took a shine to it.
So there has been quite an increase of wheat going into the states for that.

There's also been an increase into the milling market with people shipping directly to some of the mills in Minnesota and so on.
One has to always remember, Canadian winter wheat is quite different than American winter wheat.

Our whole licensing system results in a more uniform arrangement of varieties so when you get Canadian winter wheat it's a much more consistent type of a product than U.S. winter wheat.

Davidson says the Americans have discovered when you buy Canadian winter wheat you get the same product more often than when you buy American winter wheat.

Source: Farmscape