New-crop canola bids being offered by grain companies in Western Canada are seen as unlikely to attract the acres required to meet industry needs.
"Right now most new-crop bids for canola are under $9 a bushel, which is only going to cause area seeded to the crop to drop well below the 16 million-acre level," according to Ron Frost, a grains/oilseed analyst with Frost Forecasting Corp. in Calgary.
The area seeded to canola in the spring of 2009 totalled 16.199 million acres.
"Producers have been advised at present to lock up their canola bins and don't sell until well into February," Frost said.
He acknowledged the new-crop bids being offered by grain companies were probably just feelers, deliberately lowballed. The glut of soybeans in the U.S. and world markets also doesn't help, but canola was still expected to remain at a bit of a premium.
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