Canadian producers bumped up 2024 pea and lentil acres from original intentions but sharply reduced sunflower area.
According to Thursday’s Statistics Canada acreage report, just 58,000 acres of sunflowers were planted this year, well down from March intentions of 83,500 and 41.5% below the 99,200 acres planted in 2023. If accurate, it would be the smallest Canadian sunflower planted area since 35,000 acres went into the ground in 2011.
On the other hand, dry pea acres were reported at 3.211 million acres, slightly above intentions of 3.121 million and up 5.3% on the year. Lentil acres came in at 4.21 million in today’s report versus intentions of 3.828 million and 14.8% above the 3.668 million acres planted last year.
Both lentil and pea area fell within pre-report trade guesses that ranged from 3.5 million to 4.3 million acres for lentils and 2.8 million to 4 million for peas.
Producers may have opted to plant more lentils because of higher returns relative to other crops, StatsCan said. Both major lentil-producing provinces reported higher seeded area, with Saskatchewan area increasing 14% on the year to 3.6 million acres, and Alberta up 19.6% to 559,700 acres.
Dry pea area in Saskatchewan increased 8.7% from last year to 1.7 million acres, while Alberta's area fell 1.4% to 1.2 million acres.
Flax planted area was reported at 518,200 acres, up slightly from intentions of 510,300, which represented the lowest since just 312,000 acres were seeded all the way back in 1949. In 2023, producers planted 609,200 acres to flax. Pre-report expectations for flax ranged from 500,000 to 700,000 acres.
Chickpea area was pegged at 453,500 acres, versus intentions of 400,000 and 315,500 last year. It is potentially the largest chickpea area since 2002 when 475,000 acres were planted.
Mustard area increased to 606,300 acres from intentions of 591,900, although that is still down from the 637,400 acres planted in 2024. At 290,900 acres, estimated canaryseed planted area was little changed from intentions of 290,600 and up from 256,200 last year.
National dry bean area was estimated at 371,300 acres, compared to intentions of 358,900 and 318,300 in 2023.
