Canola source watch

Build the read from admitted facts. Watch everything else.

This is the source board for Sprint 1. It separates official facts, interpretation candidates, and derived proxies before anything reaches a farmer-facing market call.

V1 guardrail
Climate, satellite, and map layers are not Canola V1 inputs yet.

Canola V1 can show stale, empty, lagged, and proxy sources. It cannot quietly turn those sources into advice.

The first market read stays anchored to the live Canola packet RPC until each new lane has a source contract and freshness proof.

Current read
Canola V1
Deterministic output from get_canada_thesis_packet('Canola', ...). No LLM thesis prose.
Source truth
Live packet RPC
Facts, warnings, stale rows, empty rows, and proxy rows stay visible before interpretation.
Run ledger
Waiting
source_runs exists, but collectors still need to write run summaries before health can roll up.
Weekly spine
CGC first
CGC movement data drives the Canada market read before slower compiled or map-derived sources.

Core Weekly Spine

These sources come before slower compiled releases and map-derived stress signals.

Canada movement first

cgc_weekly_stats

Canadian Grain Commission weekly statistics

Admitted
Cadence
Weekly, after the CGC Thursday publication.
Controls
Deliveries, shipments, terminal receipts, terminal exports, stocks, producer cars, process rows, grades, regions, crop year, grain week.
Why first
This is the Canada movement anchor. It tells us what is actually flowing before we interpret acres, drought, or farmer behavior.
Guardrail
Use the canonical packet/RPC rows, not stale market_analysis prose. Show week, crop year, units, and missing worksheets.

grain_monitor_weekly

Grain Monitor weekly logistics report

Admitted
Cadence
Weekly, with natural lag versus current CGC week.
Controls
Port unloads, vessel timing, grain-in-store, rail performance, corridor capacity, logistics pressure.
Why first
It explains why CGC movement is happening, especially when export pace looks weak but the real issue is unloads, vessels, or rail.
Guardrail
Preserve report date and lag. Do not smooth it into the same week as CGC if the source is behind.

cgc_producer_cars

Producer cars and railcar staging

Admitted
Cadence
Weekly, Thursday schedule after CGC movement data.
Controls
Producer-car allocations, shipments, destinations, and farmer-direct rail pressure.
Why first
This is one of the cleanest ways to see farmer-direct logistics pressure outside the elevator channel.
Guardrail
Producer-car rows are cumulative and forward-looking in places. Treat worksheet and metric names exactly.

cftc_cot

CFTC Commitments of Traders

Admitted
Cadence
Weekly Friday release for Tuesday positioning.
Controls
Managed money, commercial hedging, net position, week-over-week positioning pressure.
Why first
It gives futures positioning context, which matters when cash movement and futures reaction diverge.
Guardrail
Canola is direct only where mapping is direct. Proxy mappings must stay labelled and cannot carry the same confidence.

aafc_statscan_supply

AAFC / StatsCan supply-disposition and crop size

Watch next
Cadence
Periodic through intentions, seeded area, model estimates, and final production.
Controls
Seeded acres, harvested acres, yield, production, imports, exports, domestic use, carryout, stocks-to-use.
Why first
This sets the season-size baseline, but it is not the weekly flow source. A lot of the grain movement truth still rolls back to CGC.
Guardrail
Label survey/model/outlook/final status. Do not treat compiled annual values as fresher than CGC weekly movement.

Candidate Weather And Satellite Lanes

Admission means the lane can affect the read. Watching means it can appear as context only.

Verified research snapshot: 2026-05-04

aafc_canadian_drought_monitor

Canadian Drought Monitor

Watch next
Cadence
Monthly. AAFC metadata says usually by the 10th for the previous month.
Best use
Official drought-class benchmark for prairie yield risk and public-source traceability.
V1 decision
Good benchmark, not live enough for V1 stress detection. Show lag explicitly if displayed.
Failure mode
Consensus product, not a raw sensor feed. It can confirm the big picture but will miss fast changes.

aafc_agroclimate_maps

AAFC Agroclimate maps

Watch next
Cadence
Near-real-time weather observations are assembled within about 12 hours, then mapped as rolling or fixed time frames.
Best use
Precipitation, temperature, GDD, SPI, SPEI, soil moisture, and drought-index context.
V1 decision
Useful next source family, but it is a weather lane. Do not let it into Canola V1 until one layer is admitted cleanly.
Failure mode
Large family of layers. Each map needs its own units, time window, geography, and failure mode.

aafc_vegdri

Vegetation Drought Response Index

Research
Cadence
AAFC service describes weekly creation at 1 km resolution from MODIS NDVI, SPI, and static landscape inputs.
Best use
A stronger crop-stress layer than raw NDVI because it tries to isolate drought-driven vegetation stress.
V1 decision
Promising, but not admitted. The AAFC image service metadata observed on 2026-05-04 ended at 2025-08-30, so freshness must be solved first.
Failure mode
If stale, it is a historical benchmark only. If rebuilt in GEE, it becomes a derived proxy and must be labelled that way.

aafc_smos_soil_moisture

Satellite soil moisture

Watch next
Cadence
Created daily from SMOS passive microwave data and averaged weekly, biweekly, or monthly.
Best use
Surface-layer moisture anomaly for drought, waterlogging, seeding conditions, and early yield-risk context.
V1 decision
Best AAFC satellite candidate after acres/production. Start as a map/read-only signal, not a thesis driver.
Failure mode
Coarse 0.25 degree grid and top-of-soil signal. Quality flags remove rain, snow, and radio-frequency interference.

nasa_servir_esi

Evaporative Stress Index

Research
Cadence
NASA/SERVIR products are commonly distributed as 4-week and 12-week ESI rasters.
Best use
Fast drought stress warning from evapotranspiration anomalies and land-surface-temperature behavior.
V1 decision
Useful early-warning proxy, but not AAFC. Keep outside Canola V1 until Canadian coverage, cadence, and access are proven.
Failure mode
Strong for flash drought, but source family, coverage, and raster access path must be pinned before farmer-facing use.

gee_derived_drought_stack

GEE derived drought stack

Deferred
Cadence
Depends on the chosen ingredients: MODIS NDVI is 16-day, MODIS LST is daily, SMAP/SMOS-style soil moisture is coarse but frequent.
Best use
A closer-to-live proxy layer that can sit beside AAFC official products and flag stress before monthly maps catch up.
V1 decision
Build later as a derived source with formulas and validation, not as a substitute for official AAFC/StatsCan records.
Failure mode
Derived models can look authoritative while being wrong. They need back-testing against AAFC drought classes and yield outcomes.
GEE answer
Yes, but it should be treated as a derived early-warning lane.

GEE can help get closer to live drought stress by combining MODIS NDVI, MODIS land-surface temperature, SMAP/SMOS-style soil moisture, and gridded precipitation. That is useful, but it is a model output, not an official source.

The clean architecture is official AAFC and StatsCan as the benchmark, GEE as the fast proxy, then Canola V1 as the consumer only after validation.

Admission test
A source enters the read only after these are pinned.
  • Official URL or explicit proxy label.
  • Cadence, lag, date field, and crop-year mapping.
  • Units and geography down to the display level.
  • Collector or API path with freshness proof.
  • Known failure modes shown in the read, not hidden.