Using AgFlow to Analyze CGC Canada Crop Production Reports

Reading time: 4 minutes

The Canadian Grain Commission (CGC) releases monthly reports for Canada crop production. The Canada Outlook for Principal Field Crops provides the best information and statistics to build Canadian-related balance sheets.

However, this report only comes in PDF format, and as such, it is not practical for analysis or building balance sheets. Moreover, it only contains information for the previous, current, and coming marketing years. Only, there is no historical data to compare and do long-term analysis in the report. To address this issue, the CGC also provides two additional reports for historical data: 

• the Area, Yield, and Production Report
• the Supply and Disposition Report 

Both accessible in the preferred format, with Supply and Disposition containing the best information for S&D analysis. Therefore, to build balance sheets, it is required to download both reports, the current one and Supply and Disposition reports, extract each statistic manually, and thus do a certain amount of work before performing analysis.

To avoid this, AgFlow built a tool regrouping all the CGC statistics from the Canada crop production reports to provide easy navigation and reading of the data.

CGC Canada Crop Production Reports Metrics on AgFlow

The Canada crop production reports provide a large panel of statistics for agricultural commodities present on the AgFlow tool, available in one table for past, current, and the coming marketing years.

Carry-in Stocks (in mt):

The Carry-in Stocks (also called Beginning Stocks) statistic is the volume of the crop available in stock at the beginning of the marketing year, as reported at the time. This statistic is important to know how much carryover will be added to the production.

Area Harvested (in ha):

The total Area Harvested for a given crop is often called acreage. However, the standard unit is in hectares (1 ha ~ 2,471 acres). CGC crop reports provide the data for Area Harvested in thousands of hectares, and it is normalized to hectares on the AgFlow tool.

Yield (in mt/ha):

The Yield provides the number of tons produced per hectare. It is, in a way, a density measure. This statistic is used to understand the efficiency and/or the quality of harvested crops.

Production (in mt):

The Production is the total weight (often called volume) of crops harvested. This is the measure of the direct local crop supply, excluding beginning stock and imports.

Imports (in mt):

Imports are the total amount of a given crop imported by in Canada from the other exporting countries.

Total Supply (in mt):

The Total Supply is the addition of all available supply over the calendar year with the beginning stocks, the production, and the imports. This statistic helps calculate whether the supply line is ample or tight compared to the demand.

Total Domestic Use (in mt):

The Total Domestic Use is the sum of all local use for a given crop.

Total Domestic Use = Food and Industrial Use + Feed Waste and Dockage + Seed + Loss in Handling

Total Exports (in mt):

The Total Exports is the sum of both Grain Exports and Product Exports, except for Oilseeds, since they have no Product Exports reported.

Total Carry-out Stocks (in mt):

The Total Carry-out Stocks statistic is the addition of both Farm Stocks and Commercial Stocks and represents the total local stock at the end of the marketing year.

The large number of statistics available in the report makes it hard to read and follow. The AgFlow tool then provides an easier way to read the data, breaking it down by commodities, and an intuitive time-series chart to analyze the trend on the spot.

How Does AgFlow Display CGC Crop Reports Metrics?

The AgFlow S&D tool displays these statistics, by commodity, for all crops available in the CGC Canada crop production report.

By first selecting the commodity for CGC source and Canada origin, one generates a table with all the statistics since 2014 up until now. AgFlow also provides an additional column with the average value over the period.

Moreover, the table lets the user select up to three statistics to instantly display in a time-series line graph to read the trends and perform analysis intuitively.

These features built into the tool curtail the workload and avoid switching between spreadsheets and tabs to build a balance sheet.

CGC Canada Crop Production Reports & AgFlow in a Nutshell

The CGC Canada crop production reports are content-heavy and yield much information on the agricultural commodities in Canada. However, it is difficult to analyze due to the current information being in an unfriendly format and having to download a different report to have historical data.

The AgFlow tool allows one to avoid the painstaking task of manually inserting data and switching between tables in the historical report to create new spreadsheets, displaying:

• An easy-to-read table with the Supply and Disposition statistics for all Canadian crops since 2010
• A time-series line graph from up to three statistics in the table, for any combination, and instantly generated

Currently, AgFlow’s Supply and Demand tool updates monthly with every new release of the CGC Canada crop production report.

However, a future version of the tool will provide a more timely, accurate, and global vision of Supply and Demand. This new dynamic version will include daily AIS shipment lineups, quality metrics, prices, and other datasets to compare with reports like the ABARES. Consequently, It will enhance tracking daily commodities flux, unveiling correlations between statistics, and even predicting global balance sheets moves.