Canola comes off two weeks early, and the elevators adjust on the fly
A dry July moved the whole county's timeline up. The crop is lighter than hoped, drier than feared, and moving fast.
The swathers were running county-wide by the weekend, a full two weeks ahead of the long-term average, and the first canola deliveries crossed the scales Monday — dry enough to bin straight off the field, which is the one mercy of the summer that produced them.
July did the deciding. Twenty-two millimetres of rain for the month pushed the crop through flowering in a hurry, and what the heat took from yield it returned in moisture content: samples so far are testing dry, saving growers the drying charges that ate into the last two wet-fall harvests.
The elevators have flipped their schedules to match. Both county facilities moved their extended hours up by two weeks, and the line company's early-delivery contracts — usually a September conversation — were being amended by phone this week. Basis has narrowed accordingly; grain buyers like a crop they can load before the railways get busy.
The yield picture will not be honest until the combines finish, but the coffee-row consensus is "average, and glad of it." As one grower put it at the scale Monday: "Two years ago I hauled tough grain in November. This year I'll be done by Labour Day. I know which problem I prefer."
