Boosted by a promising ethanol industry, Ontario farmers are planning to plant a humungus amount of corn this year. Quebec will increase corn acreage by 13 per cent to 1.1 million acres, just under the 2002 record. But Ontario will plant 2.2 million acres — twice as many as Quebec equaling the record set in 1981.

Ontario farmers will plant 32.6 per cent more than last year, says Statistics Canada.

East central and eastern Ontario farmers show no sign of changing their minds on what to plant despite the ups and downs of the commodity market. The manager of Tri-County Agrimart in east central Ontario, Larry Hutcheson, says farmers in the three counties around Belleville traditionally have changed their minds until the fifth of May and changes can still happen. But corn is the main choice unless weather dictates otherwise.

"The wheat acreage is down by half," he says and farmers are replacing it with corn. "We lost the winter wheat crop because we couldn’t get the soybeans off in time last fall."

Larger farms in the area will stick with their crop rotations, he said, though the increased price of corn is tempting.

At Picton, the regional director of the Ontario Corn Producers Association says many barns are still full of hay. He expects a 10 per cent to 20 per cent increase in the acreage of corn, with Round-up corn replacing hay in some cases.

In Russell County seed salesman Hank Staal says he’s sold some wheat in late April but doesn’t expect many changes in farmers’ intentions unless the weather turns nasty. Though some farmers are already planting the better drained fields, too many nights have been cold and the ground is cold.

"There hasn’t been a major swing to corn in Renfrew," says producer Larry Reaburn. Some hay fields are not being seeded because of the surplus. Scott Banks, a ministry of agriculture crop specialist out of Kemptville, says hay fields are in surplus. "There has been no winterkill," he says.

While the focus is all on corn, estimated soybean acreage in Ontario will match corn acreage. Ontario will plant 2.2 million acres while Quebec farmers will plant 476,900 acres.

But the decline in soybeans in the east has been outstripped by canola growth in the west. Prairie farmers will plant a record 14.7 million acres of canola, an increase of 11.5 per cent over last year.

Across Canada, barley oats, canola, durum wheat acreage has increased. Spring wheat, soybeans, flaxseed are down.

The amount of summer fallow has decreased by almost 25 per cent.