The 2010 growing season has been characterized by abnormally wet weather which has resulted in an estimated six to ten million acres remaining unseeded across the Canadian prairies and anticipated quality reductions on much of the crop that did go into the ground.

Canadian Wheat Board weather and crop analyst Stuart McMillan anticipates production decreases in all of the major cereals this year so feed grain will be relatively tight with the only exception being some abundant and good looking corn crops on the eastern prairies.

Stuart McMillan-Canadian Wheat Board

We've seen quite a significant drop say in the oat acreage and the oat production.

Certainly the drop in barley acres has been severe but I think the yield potential has still remained fairly positive so we're only seeing say about a nine percent drop from 2009 to 2010 in terms of total production, by no means our lowest production in around the eight million tonnes of barley.

As well we can certainly see a lot of the winter cereals did remarkably well this year.

Unfortunately for those farmers although not unfortunately on a feed potential a variety of downgrading factors have been pushing that winter wheat crop down into twos and into feed category so a relatively small portion of the winter wheat may well end up meeting milling standards this year.

Mr McMillan notes continued drought through the Peace River region has impacted feed grain availability there but crop yield potential looks excellent moving into northern and north central Alberta.

He says, while abundant rains have caused problems in southern Alberta and south west Saskatchewan the moisture has set up some of the dryland areas with the best crops they have seen in years and the continuing rains have added to the water based woes farmers have faced in northern and eastern Saskatchewan.