2007 Crop Planning Guide now available

Source: Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food

The 2007 editions of the Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food (SAF) Crop Planning Guides are available to producers through the Agriculture Knowledge Centre or the department’s website.

The guides are designed to assist producers in planning their crop choices based on a number of variables.

“It’s an annual publication designed to help producers calculate their own costs of production,” said SAF Provincial Crop Economics Specialist Joe Novak. “If they don’t have their own costs estimated, they can use the guides to do that.”

According to Novak, the department compiles the guide’s baseline numbers from a number of different data sources.

“The data comes from surveys done by SAF, Statistics Canada and Saskatchewan Crop Insurance, and from information obtained through discussions with farm input suppliers,” said Novak.

The most important factor in using the guides is to individualize your plan to stay up to date on the latest input costs, says Novak.

“Producers need to continually update their own numbers, especially now as spring approaches. Fertilizer prices have been climbing and are now higher than what is listed in the guide, which was a blend of fall 2006 and spring 2007 price forecasts,” he stated.

“It’s important because fertilizer prices are highly volatile, and ultimately may impact on crop selection based on profitability.”

Although there are guides for each of the three different soil zones, they do not specifically address local differences such as soil type and moisture. That is why it is so important for producers to plug in their own yield estimates for the various crops on their own farms.

Novak says that input costs and estimated prices are just part of the equation. “Crop planning has to look at diseases and crop rotation, chemical rotation and, finally, economics. So rotation may be as significant a factor in planning as the numbers themselves.”

In addition, farmers’ local knowledge of typical yields is an important variable for use with the guides.

“Revenue varies greatly among different operations, so producers should not necessarily rely on the guide’s yield estimates,” said Novak. “Producers must also look at crop prices to see if the guide’s estimates are applicable to their individual situations.”

One important difference between the 2006 and 2007 crop planning guides is that producers will be working with more positive numbers this year.

“What a difference a year makes,” said Novak. “The numbers for 2007 are a significant improvement over the previous couple of years.”

Novak stresses that the guides are simply a template, and that producers must bring their own knowledge to bear, along with the very latest information they can get on costs, yields and price forecasts.

The 2007 Crop Planning Guides are available by calling the Agriculture Knowledge Centre at 1-866-457-2377, and online at www.agr.gov.sk.ca.

For more information, contact:
Joe Novak, Provincial Crop Economics Specialist
Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food
Phone: (306) 787-6613