By Tom Collins
OTTAWA — The extreme rainy conditions during planting and most of the summer won’t have a big impact on yield numbers for corn and soybeans for crops that were planted in time.
Statistics Canada’s model-based principal field crop estimates for Ontario predicts 169.5 bushels per acre for corn and 49.3 bu/ac for soybeans. That would be a record for soybeans and the second-highest ever for corn, trailing 2015’s 170.6 bu/ac.
Model-based estimates incorporates coarse resolution satellite data from Statistics Canada’s Crop Condition Assessment Program, data from Statistics Canada’s field crop reporting series and agroclimatic data.
StatCan’s numbers are much higher than other evaluations. Great Lakes Grain’s yield estimates for the province is 164.6 bu/ac for corn and 44.1 bu/ac for soybeans. The company mainly does crop assessments for Western Ontario. However, it did release a crop assessment for Embrun at 177 bu/ac for corn and 39.6 bu/ac for soybeans.
Farms.com’s crop assessment tour had the province at 163.2 bu/ac and 45.7 bu/ac for soybeans. They predict corn yields of 147 bu/ac and soybean yields of 41 bu/ac for Central Ontario, and 160 bu/ac corn yields and 44 bu/ac soybean yields for Eastern Ontario.
The five-year Eastern Ontario corn yield average is 152.5 bu/ac, while for the province it is 160.7 bu/ac. For soybeans, the five-year Eastern Ontario average is 44.7 bu/ac, and for the province it is 46.5 bu/ac.
Duncan Ferguson, a grain elevator operator at Williamstown, did a crop assessment for Dundas County and says top-end yields in the south end of the county could be 180 bu/ac and in the north end around 160 bu/ac. However, those yields could be 25 per cent less if weather turned poor at the end of September or the start of October.
