Canada: Prairie spring wheat looks like a bumper crop

The numbers aren’t finalized, but it’s possible that Canada will set a record for spring wheat yields and total production in 2025.

In the end, a dry spring likely helped the spring wheat. The plants developed better roots, allowing the wheat to pull moisture and nutrients from deeper in the soil profile, said Dean Roberts, who farms in western Saskatchewan near Coleville.

Why it matters: Farmers were pessimistic about crops in dry weather plagued areas of the Prairies earlier this year.

Jake Ayre, who runs seed retailer Southern Seed in Minto, Man., with his father, Andrew, shared a similar story.

Southwestern Manitoba, like Roberts’s area, which saw little rain early in the season, was also dry in May and June. In response, wheat roots grew downward to find moisture.

“I was talking to our agronomist … and they noticed that in the western region (of Manitoba), cereal roots were going down in some spots a metre or more deep,” Ayre said.

Ayre didn’t comment on spring wheat yields in his part of Manitoba, but it’s obvious that the 2025 crop is large.

New grain bins are “moving down the road,” anecdotal indication that farmers in the region are looking for storage.

Provincial crop reports from Manitoba and Alberta both indicate that spring wheat yields are robust:

Manitoba Agriculture says spring wheat yields are well above 60 bushels per acre (bu./acre), with some areas recording yields in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. In Alberta, the provincial report for the middle of September said the average yield was nearly 55 bu., with central Alberta posting 67 bu. per acre. Saskatchewan Agriculture, in its Oct. 9 crop report, likewise estimated that’s province’s hard red spring wheat yield at 51 bu./acre.

That’s five bushels higher than the 46 bushel average from 2024 and nearly two more than the Statistics Canada estimate of 49.2 bu./acre for Saskatchewan released in September.

If provincial estimates from across the Prairies are combined, it seems probable that spring wheat will break the yield record of 54.1 bu./acre from 2020, using Statistics Canada numbers.

In its September estimates for field crops, StatCan projected spring wheat yields at 53.1 bu. That’s marginally above 2024, when the average was 52.1 bu.

StatCan also forecast the spring wheat crop at 26.6 million tonnes, which is the largest tonnage ever.

Yields and total tonnage could be significantly higher because traders and analysts have criticized StatCan and its methodology, saying its crop production estimates are too low. The federal agency estimated Manitoba’s spring wheat yield at 60 bu. per acre, which is five bu. lower than 2024.

Hitting new highs on the combine’s yield monitor and filling up grain bins is rewarding, but farmers are coping with weak prices at the elevator.

In west-central Saskatchewan, spring wheat bids are around $6.75 to $7 per bu., Roberts said.

“Yeah, we have a phenomenal yield, but with the price coming down, our revenue number doesn’t look much different,” Roberts said.

“That’s what really matters…. When the revenue number doesn’t change, it still causes some worry.”

Tags: Canada, Production, yields, crop, spring wheat