No-Show Spring Puts Farm Spending on Ice in Canada’s Prairies
- February sales of agriculture supplies sag most in seven years
- ‘A lot of farmers got really cautious with the snow pack’
Photographer: Akos Stiller/Bloomberg
This article is for subscribers only.
The seemingly endless winter that swept through Canada’s Prairies prompted farmers to put their seed and fertilizer purchases on ice.
Wholesale sales of agricultural supplies including feeds, seeds, fertilizers and herbicides fell 17 percent in February, the largest monthly decline since 2011, according to Statistics Canada data released Monday. Parts of Canada’s heartland were walloped by above-normal snowfall this winter, with swaths of Alberta and Saskatchewan receiving as much as 1.5 times average precipitation from November to March, according to data from the nation’s agriculture ministry.