Canada: Feed barley bids continue to hold steady

Feed barley bids in Western Canada continue to hold steady, while attention in the market turns to the new crop going into the ground, the Alberta Farmers Express reported on May 20.

“There currently is an uptick in demand for quick movement presenting good opportunities for producers ready to sell,” Alberta grain brokerage Agfinity said in a note to clients.

“However, many feedlots have indicated that they are in decent shape and covered into new crop, some due to switching over to corn until harvest.”

Bids in the C$400-C$410 per tonne range can currently be found for May-June delivery into the Lethbridge feedlot alley in southern Alberta. For the new crop, Agfinity noted producers were showing some caution in contracting due to dry seeding conditions.

On the export front, year-to-date Canadian barley exports through 41 weeks of the 2022-23 marketing year of 2.6 million tonnes compare with 1.8 million at the same point the previous year. However, only 20,000 tonnes left the country during the week, according to the latest Canadian Grain Commission report.

Meanwhile, feedlots continue to bring corn from the U.S., with the potential for more imports likely to keep a lid on upside in the Canadian feed market even if any problems develop with the domestic crops.

Since September, Canada has imported 402,600 tonnes of U.S. corn as of May 11, with an additional 128,400 tonnes of outstanding business, according to the latest U.S. Department of Agriculture report. That’s well off the 2.8 million tonnes of imports and 938,800 million tonnes of outstanding sales at the same time the previous year when drought conditions limited domestic grain supplies.

However, Canadian feedlots have become more comfortable bringing up U.S. corn, with the established logistics likely to continue to overhang the local feed market, according to MarketsFarm analyst Mike Jubinville.

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