2025 Pre-Seeding Crop Report

Next stop: the cleaner! Seeds on the move.

2025 Pre-Seeding Crop Report – Oat and Pulse Market

From the desk of Mike Gallais, Director of Procurement

April is well upon us. As we start yet another growing season, farmers have been busy finalizing their crop plans — and then changing them in response to shifting geopolitical tariffs.

Has anyone told the politicians that it is tough enough getting it right when considering just weather patterns and consumer demands? We don’t need another factor in the cropping equation. In addition, it is predicted that profitability, or net farm income, is going to be less this year than it has been in the past four years.

The consensus from growers I’ve spoken with these past weeks is that there are no clear winners in this horse race. In other words, no one crop appears to have more potential than another.

Typically, when there are no outright winners, farmers fall back onto their crop rotations. However, they usually have 10% of their acres available to swing into a crop that they predict will be a winner. This year that bet is proving difficult. Let’s examine the crops Avena deals with for a bird’s eye view of the situation.

Oat Production Forecast

The oat crop is tight without a huge carryover of milling oats. Based on our conversations with farmers, we expect to see slightly higher oat acres, but not enough to rebuild stocks for next year. This market could take off if we have any trouble in the major oat growing areas. Statistics Canada predicts just shy of three million acres, up 2.7% from last year.

Pulse Production Forecast

We predict pea acres to be flat or up slightly from the 3.2 million acres planted last year. I expect to see 600,000 acres of green peas and 2.6 million acres of yellow peas seeded in 2025.

Early in the winter, we were paying $4 per bushel more for green peas than yellows. At that time a seed grower told me that, despite this pricing, he was selling far more yellow pea seed than green. When I recently saw the same seed grower, he was sold out of green. This shift was likely caused by Chinese tariffs on Canadian yellow peas.

Large green and small green lentil acres will be strong with acres up. New crop pricing is not as sexy as last year but an average yield at current pricing is still profitable, even with prices being 20% less than last year.

Red lentils are trading at similar prices to last year so these acres will likely be down. It is interesting to note that pea and lentil acres are hampered the most by disease in the soil. Farmers frequently wait as many as eight years after a disease cycle, before adding them into their rotation on the same piece of land.

Chickpeas are a different story. There will be a carry-over of roughly 100,000 metric tonnes. What does this mean? It means that chickpeas are going to attract lower prices than last year.

Yet surprisingly, chickpeas may increase in acreage. The additional acres may be grown in non-traditional chickpea growing areas. We might see them on the heavier clay soils of the Regina Plains rather than the lighter land in South West Saskatchewan. This increase in acres is mainly due to the fact that chickpeas are more profitable than some of the other crops in the rotation.

Coming Soon: Avena Regen Ag Protocol (ARAP)

Avena, with the support of farmers, researchers, and customers, has been working through the winter on a regenerative agriculture program. We are excited to be rolling out the Avena Regen Ag Protocol (ARAP) at our Customer and Farmer Appreciation Day (CAFAD) in Rowatt, Saskatchewan on Tuesday, July 22. Keep an eye out for more announcements.