Canada's farmers are more optimistic than analysts about prospects for their grain harvest, but believe the fall in canola production may be, at 25%, even bigger than official statisticians have forecast.

Growers believe their wheat crop this year will come in at 23.6m tonnes a figure which, while 17.5% down on the 2008 harvest, is ahead of the government estimate of 22.5 m tonnes.

It is also 1.9m tonnes more than a US attaché in Ottowa forecast earlier this month, proposing that "harsher weather conditions" meant Canadian farmers would not have gone through with all their plantings.

Growers were also ahead of Canada's agriculture ministry on estimates for production of barley and oats, a farm survey by Statistics Canada showed.

Stocks squeeze 

However, farmers' forecast for canola output was, at 9.54m tonnes, 759,000 tonnes below the official prediction, opening up the potential for even tighter stocks than the agriculture ministry believes are on the cards.

The ministry forecast Canada's canola stocks tumbling 61% to 700,000 tonnes between the start of this month and July 2010, weakened by a lower harvest and demand from new crushing plants.

Canola growers in all three of Canada's Prairie provinces, the country's agricultural heartland, reported "potential declines in area harvested, yield and production", with Alberta farmers braced for a 39% drop in output, StatsCan said.

'Yields will drop' 

Many observers have been trimming hopes for Canada's harvest this year, following cold and dry summer weather following on from what was, for many areas, a wet spring, which delayed plantings.

The US Department of Agriculture last week knocked 1m tonnes from its forecast for Canada's wheat output, and 1.33m tonnes from its corn harvest estimate.

StatsCan said: "Late germination caused by unfavourable conditions this spring has held back progress by about two weeks compared with normal.

"Yields will drop for all major crops compared with 2008. In the drought-stricken areas of Saskatchewan and Alberta, higher than normal abandonment was also shown to be a factor in the loss of production."