Acreage Ideas for 2025

A lot of acreage decisions have already been made for the 2025 crop. Of course, prices play a large role but to some degree, crop rotations lock in most acres as factors like disease and weed control determine which crops can be planted and where. Input costs also influence decisions. Unfortunately, geopolitics and potential trade issues are causing much more uncertainty and risk this year, adding a whole new layer to the decision-making process for 2025.

We’re also hearing more discussion that under the stressed conditions in the last 2-3 years, some crops responded better while others were disappointing. It seems like this performance is shifting farmers’ opinions about which crops to emphasize and which ones to avoid. We’re also hearing that these differences are often local and could cause acreage swings within specific regions.

All these factors make acreage forecasts even more tentative than usual. For our acreage projections, we usually use the word “guesstimate”, admitting there’s as much gut instinct involved as there is hard analysis. With that disclaimer, here’s what we’re thinking for seeded area in 2025.

For pulse crops, acreage should remain solid in 2025. We’ve run some rough gross margin comparisons and received feedback from various sources. For the most part, it looks like pulses are viewed favourably and acres will increase or, at the worst, only decline slightly from last year’s high levels.

In 2024, 481,000 acres of chickpeas were planted, the most in over 20 years. Compared to a year ago, kabuli chickpea bids have now declined but the crop still performs well in our gross margin comparisons. Other scattered reports are suggesting that farmers are taking a serious look at including chickpeas again in 2025, especially with some other crops like canola performing poorly in the last couple of years. For now, we’re thinking that chickpea seeded area will dip slightly to 450,000 acres, but that would still be historically high.

Acreage of dry beans was also up last year in response to strong bids prior to seeding. Since then, prices have come off the highs and we think that could be enough of a decline to cause a small drop in seeded area for 2025. At 375,000 acres, this wouldn’t be considered low, but in line with the 5-year average. After a shift into black and pinto bean acres in 2024, higher prices for minor classes could push more 2025 acres back into types like kidney and white beans.

Prices of both yellow and green peas are close to where they were a year ago, although green peas are continuing to trend higher while yellows are currently running sideways. The yellow pea market is also more vulnerable to trade disruptions than greens, which might cause some indecision for farmers. That said, 2024 peas in most areas of the prairies performed fairly well compared to some other crops which could encourage more acres in 2025. Our guesstimate is 3.3 mln acres, up slightly from last year, with most or all of that increase showing up in green peas.

Lentil production in 2024 was extremely variable. The main areas where green lentils are grown faced very difficult circumstances and yields were hit hard while StatsCan reported very strong red lentil yields in 2024. There were disease outbreaks in some areas but overall, this was less of an issue in 2024. Prices for both red and green lentils are lower than they were a year ago but still seem to be attracting some attention. As a result, we think lentil acreage could increase slightly to 4.35 mln acres and just like peas, that increase would be focused on greens.

Of course, all kinds of things could still change in the outlook and affect farmers’ decisions. One major source of uncertainty is the trade relationship with the US, which would have the greatest impact on chickpeas and dry beans. For peas and lentils, the potential for a return of Indian tariffs could also affect the outlook for Canadian exports and prices.

Pulse Market Insight provides market commentary from Chuck Penner of LeftField Commodity Research to help with pulse marketing decisions.