Principal field crop areas, June 2015
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Released: 2015-06-30
As of June 11, 2015, farmers had either planted or intended to plant more wheat, corn for grain, barley and oats compared with 2014, while acreages seeded to soybeans and canola were down.
Seeding conditions were generally favourable this spring, with drier conditions allowing farmers to wrap up seeding a few weeks earlier compared with 2014. However, May frost on parts of the Prairies required some farmers to re-seed.
Wheat
Canadian farmers reported increasing their 2015 plantings of wheat by 1.3% from 2014 to 24.1 million acres. This gain was driven by a 21.1% rise in planted acres of durum wheat to 5.8 million acres, while spring wheat fell by 1.5% to 17.1 million acres.
Provincially, Alberta farmers reported that area seeded to all varieties of wheat edged up 0.7% in 2015 to 6.8 million acres, with durum area rising 45.5% to 800,000 acres, while area seeded to spring wheat declined 2.7%.
Saskatchewan farmers reported that wheat seedings fell by less than 1.0% in 2015 to 13.0 million acres. Spring wheat accounted for this decline, down 7.4% to 7.9 million acres. Meanwhile, durum wheat increased 17.9% to 5.0 million acres in 2015.
Manitoba farmers reported seeding 3.0 million acres of spring wheat, up 17.3% from 2014.
Canola
Canadian farmers reported seeding 19.8 million acres of canola in 2015, down 2.4% from 2014.
In Saskatchewan, canola acreage fell 1.9% to 10.5 million acres. Farmers in Alberta seeded 6.1 million acres of canola, down 6.2% compared with 2014. However, Manitoba farmers reported a 4.7% increase in canola acreage to 3.1 million acres.
Soybeans
Nationally, area seeded to soybeans was 5.4 million acres in 2015, 2.5% below the record high of 2014. This decline was driven by decreases in Quebec and Ontario, which typically account for around 70% of total acreage sown in Canada.
Ontario farmers sowed 2.9 million acres of soybeans, down 4.6% from 2014. In Quebec, the area planted to soybeans was reported at 778,400 acres, down 9.5%.
On the Prairies, however, soybean acreages increased in both Manitoba and Saskatchewan in 2015. Manitoba farmers reported a 4.7% increase to 1.3 million acres, while in Saskatchewan, they reported planting 300,000 acres (+11.1% from 2014).
Barley and oats
At the national level, the overall area seeded to barley rose 10.7% from 2014 to 6.5 million acres in 2015.
Meanwhile, the total acreage planted to oats increased 21.6% from 2014 to 3.4 million acres.
Corn for grain
Canadian farmers reported planting 3.3 million acres of corn for grain in 2015, up 5.7% from 2014.
Farmers in Ontario boosted their area seeded to corn for grain by 9.6% in 2015 to 2.1 million acres, matching their five-year average. In Quebec, the area seeded to corn for grain was up 2.8% to 901,900 acres.
Note to readers
The June Farm Survey, which collects information on crop seeded areas in Canada, was conducted between May 28 and June 11, 2015, with approximately 24,500 farms. Farmers were asked to report their seeded areas of grain, oilseeds and special crops.
June seeded acres are subject to updates from subsequent surveys during the current crop year. Data on final acreages for 2015 will be released on December 4, 2015, and may be subject to revision for two years.
Farm surveys collect data from Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta for every cycle of the survey. However, data are collected only twice a year (in the current June Farm survey on seeded areas and in the November Farm survey on final crop production) for Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and British Columbia, which represent between 2% and 4% of national totals.
Release calendar: The dates for upcoming releases of stocks, areas and productions of principal field crops are available online.
Percentage changes are calculated using data prior to rounding.
Contact information
For more information, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact us (toll-free 1-800-263-1136; 514-283-8300; infostats@statcan.gc.ca) or Media Relations (613-951-4636; statcan.mediahotline-ligneinfomedias.statcan@canada.ca).
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