Some unexpected demand from South American have pushed oats exports past the one million tonne mark through the first five months of the crop year.

Chile usually supplies oats to neighboring South American countries, but domestic supplies were not sufficient this year.

Chuck Penner with LeftField Commodity Research says Chilean buyers turned to Canada to fill the gap.

Canadian exports of oat flakes and processed oat products have also been strong.

Canadian farmers grew more than 4.5 million tonnes of oats last year, the biggest crop in more than a decade.

There was less competition from Australia following a multi-year drought, but the Australians will be back in the market this year.

Based on a pre-Christmas analysis, Penner had oats as the highest margin cereal grain in Saskatchewan black soil zone,

However, he doesn’t believe it will lead to a higher seeded area.

Penner is also forecasting a 550-thousand tonne carryout of oats.

While that would be larger than the past two years, it is still about half of the carryout in the 20113-2014 crop year.

Penner made his comments during the online CropSphere conference.

(with files from CJWW)