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Saskatchewan, Canada’s largest wheat and canola producer, had 25 percent fewer acres that were too wet to plant this year, the province’s insurer said.
A total of 1.5 million acres of an approximate 27 million acres of insured farmland has not been seeded this year due to wet conditions, down from about 2 million acres in 2012, according to the Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Corp., a government-owned company in Melville, Saskatchewan, that provides insurance and financial services to farmers.
Some areas in the southeast near the U.S. border and around Saskatoon were too wet to seed, Shawn Jaques, the chief executive officer for SCIC, said in a telephone interview from Regina. A total of 6,000 claims have been processed and the insurer will pay out C$67 million ($63.9 million) to farmers, he said.
Saskatchewan has 44 percent of Canada’s cultivated farmland, and is the largest grower of spring wheat and canola. While rainfall delayed seeding in some parts of the province, farmers were able to get 96 percent of their crops in the ground by early June, the province’s agriculture ministry said in a report today.
A record 6.8 million acres of farmland went unseeded in 2010 due to excess moisture, Jaques said.
Editors: Thomas Galatola, Steve Stroth