Global corn demand has outstripped supplies in
three of the last four years, and hospitable growing weather and corn varieties
that mature faster from Monsanto and DuPont
have led Canadian farmers to switch to corn as a viable crop, according to reports.
Canadian planters sowed a record 121,400 hectares of corn in Manitoba,
Saskatchewan and Alberta in 2012, compared with an estimated 96.9 million acres
sown in the U.S. Farmland values nationwide increased 27 percent from 2007 to
2011, to C$1,610 (US$1,616) per acre. U.S. farmland prices rose 19 percent in
the same period, to $2,390 per acre. This new, expanded corn belt is turning
Canadian farmland into a long-term investment play on global warming, said Tom
Eisenhauer, president of Ottawa-based farmland investment firm Bonnefield Inc.
“You can do a lot of different things here with a longer growing season,” he
said.
The growth in Canadian corn is also encouraging Cargill
Inc. to invest in grain storage in Canada, according to CEO Gregory Page,
and the prospect of new demand is pushing DuPont Pioneer, a seed division of DuPont, to improve its short-season crop varieties.
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