Huge increase in lentils seeded this year, StatsCan says
43% more acres of the pulse crop seeded, setting a new record
There's lots of wheat and canola in the fields, but the crop that's really surging this year is lentils.
According to Statistics Canada, Saskatchewan farmers planted a record area of lentils in 2016 at 5.3 million acres.
The seeded area is 43 per cent larger than last year's acreage, which was also a record, the recently released StatsCan report said.
Wheat remains the king of the crops, with 12.8 million acres, which includes 7.8 million acres of spring wheat and five million acres of durum wheat.
The total area seeded to canola grew to 10.9 million acres in 2016.
The explanation for the increase in lentils seems to be crop prices.
The price of Canada Western Red Spring wheat is about five per cent higher than it was a year ago, whereas the price of large green lentils has shot up 33 per cent higher than last year.