ONTARIO — Canada’s 2022 crop season produced a record corn harvest and third-largest wheat harvest ever. Ontario farmers contributed to that bountiful picture — though overall Ontario corn, wheat and soybean production dipped a bit from 2021.
That’s according to the latest figures from Statistics Canada on this year’s harvest.
Canadian grain corn production rose 4 % to a record 14.5 million tonnes grown on 3.6 million acres, up 3.8 % from a year earlier, according to StatCan. Corn yields edged up 0.2 bushels per acre to 160.4 bu/ac in the corn-producing provinces.
Ontario’s average corn yields clocked in better than that, at 166 bu/ac, though that was down 5.3 % from 2021 because of drier conditions in the southwest. However, overall corn production in Ontario edged down only 0.4 % to hit 9.4 million tonnes — just shy of last year’s record — as corn acres rose 5.2 % to 2.2 million.
Ontario soybean acres also went up 5.2 % in 2022 but production still fell 2.1 % to 4 million tonnes. The increased acreage couldn’t fully offset a 7 % decline in soybean yields to 48 bu/ac.
Nationally, soybean production increased 4.3% to 6.5 million tonnes in 2022. A 0.7% decrease in harvested area was offset by a 5 % increase in Canadian soybean yields.
Ontario produced less winter wheat in 2022 than in 2021 — with just over 2.2 million tonnes harvested from 848,000 acres in 2022. The 2021 wheat crop weighed in at nearly 2.7 million tonnes on just over 1 million acres. Though a smaller crop than a year earlier, record yield performance was the story of Ontario’s 2022 winter wheat: StatCan recorded a whopping 96.5 bu/ac average. Agricorp also reported yields in the same record range.
