2022 Farms.com Risk Management 8th Annual
Ontario Planting Intentions Survey Results
Congratulations to the Winners of the Random Draw Prizes!
As our way of saying thank you for completing the Farms.com Risk Management Planting Intentions Survey, three survey participants were chosen at random to win cash prizes.
Congratulations to the following cash prize winners!
- $300 - Don & Jeff Curry, Grey
- $200 - Stan Vandenbos, Haldimand-Norfolk
- $100 - Thomas Wahler, Prescott & Russell
A NEW RECORD for 2022 Ontario corn acres!
A 2022 Farms.com Risk Management Ontario farmer survey, conducted during January 11th - March 21st, 2022, is projecting that Ontario (ON) farmers intend to plant 6.271 million acres of corn, soybeans and all wheat combined this year. This is slightly lower than last year’s final total, which was above 6.3 million, and below the standing record of 6.4 million acres set in 2019. 2022 intended Ontario corn acres are a NEW RECORD of 2.27 million acres, which is higher by 5.8% vs. last year’s final Stats Canada acreage, and above the 5-year average of 2.163 million. Total 2022 soybean acres are up by 5.02% vs. 2021 and remains above 3 million acres, the 2nd highest since 2019.
Moe Agostino, Chief Commodity Strategist at Farms.com Risk Management, is saying that, “he is not surprised to hear that seed companies are reporting higher corn seed sales. But higher corn acres are being driven by record high yields from last year (Agricorp’s final yield for 21/22 was 200 bpa!) and higher prices.” Input availability will not be a problem in Ontario for the 2022 planting season, but we are missing nitrogen supplies that need to be available for the side dress season in May/June unless you want to pay a 35% tariff!” Ontario only has two-thirds of the capacity required to store all farmer fertilizer needs, according to Mosaic. 3 to 8 cargos of nitrogen have been sourced from Algeria, Nigeria, Egypt and the Middle East for side dress season during May/June that normally is sourced by Russia.
According to Stephen Denys, Director of Business Management, Maizex Seeds, “the price of corn is keeping up with input costs and is still making corn attractive to plant. Even though prices are dictating to plant more corn acres, the heavy clay regions of Essex, Lambton and Haldimand could easily switch to soybean acres if we get a wet planting season.”
Total Ontario wheat acres will drop due to winter kill!
OMAFRA is forecasting the 2022 all wheat crop acreage to be 930,000 acres, which is lower year-on-year (Y/Y), and the Farms.com Risk Management survey results were more or less in line with those figures projecting 917,506 all wheat acres in Ontario this year. SRW wheat acres account for 83% of the total, coming in at 765,307. The 2022 ON SRW wheat acreage is lower by 26.91% Y/Y, HRW wheat is lower by 16.09%, SWW wheat higher by 22.07%, and HRS wheat acreage higher by 3.40%. According to Wheat Pete (aka Peter Johnson), “many farmers across the province are quite surprised about how the winter wheat crop looks currently, particularly for the later planted crop.” There is more November planted wheat than expected. He stated that some of the HRS spring wheat seeds have been shipped from Western Canada and the heavy clay counties of Niagara and Essex do not look so hot. He estimates the 2022 winter kill to be at the high end of the range with a 10% loss, and most of these acres will go to soybeans as it’s the easy button to reduce risk due to a lack of nitrogen supplies heading into planting season.”
Rotation seems to be the key word, but Mother Nature will have the final say
44% of all respondents said that they were increasing corn acreage this year, 45% said that they were increasing soybean acreage, but wheat acreage is lower by 27% Y/Y. Rotation seems to be the magic word.
In 2022, Ontario farmers are expected to plant 124,652 more corn acres Y/Y with the most gains coming from Central Ontario, which sees (a 19.3% gain, followed by Western Ontario with an 8.2% gain). 2022 Ontario soybean intended acres will be higher by 147,375 acres Y/Y with an acreage increase in the South, which is higher by 12.3% Y/Y. Central Ontario higher by 12.9%, and the North higher by 55.6%. IP soybean acres are expected to be higher by 9% Y/Y while specialty bean acres are expected to be lower by 5%. Silage, sugar beet, hay and rye acreages are expected to be lower by 9-15%. The big “gainers” included oats (higher by 67%) and barley (higher by 50%)!
A delayed planting season due to wet weather means less actual planted corn acres
The weather forecast is calling for a wet/cool 2022 ON planting season through the first half of May. If corn planting is delayed until the May 24 weekend only 75% of the acres will get planted. Soybean seed supply could become an issue. Greg Stewart, former OMAFRA “Corn Guru” and now lead agronomist for Maizex Seeds, says that “it will be a big surprise if we can hold on to record corn acres unless we have a good spring.” Bottom line, despite soaring fertilizer prices, Stewart says that, “if you overapplied fertilizer last fall, you could reduce your spring application without reducing yields.”
The acreage estimates in this report are based primarily on surveys conducted during the months of January - March 2022. The 2022 Farms.com Risk Management Planting Intentions Survey is a probability survey that includes a sample of farmers from across Ontario. This survey used to make acreage estimates is subject to sampling and non-sampling errors that are common to all surveys. Sampling errors represent the variability between estimates that would result if many different samples were surveyed at the same time. Sampling errors for major crops are generally between 1.0 – 3.0% but they cannot be applied directly to the acreage published in this report to determine confidence intervals because the official estimates represent a composite of information from more than a single source.