Farmscape for May 5, 2017

Saskatchewan Agriculture reports adverse weather, including rain and even snow, has resulted in delayed spring field work such as applying herbicide, harrowing and seeding in some areas.
Saskatchewan Agriculture released its first crop report of the season yesterday.
Shannon Friesen, a regional Crop Specialist, with Saskatchewan Agriculture, says adverse weather has delayed spring field work but Saskatchewan farmers are slowly making their way into the fields.

Clip-Shannon Friesen-Saskatchewan Agriculture:
We've had a bit of a late spring.
We have received large amounts of precipitation as well as snow over the last couple of weeks so field conditions aren't quite ideal for most producers in the province.
However at the moment we do have one percent of the provincial crop seeded.
The bulk of that is in the south part where the southwest has two percent complete and the southeast part of the province has three percent done.
Overall things have been quite slow in comparison to previous years but the forecast is for warmer days so hopefully a lot more producers will be able to get into the field in the next couple of weeks.
Parts of the north are still dealing with excess moisture.
There's still reports of some snow out there in some cases but, as soon as they're able to get into the fields, things will be going fairly quickly for us.
Of course at the moment most of the crops that are being seeded are crops such as pulses, whether that's pea or lentils.
We've heard reports of durum, barley, spring wheat and even some cases of some canola and mustard going in as well.

An estimated 1.3 million acres were left unharvested last fall.
Friesen says progress was very slow over the winter and between one million and 1.3 million are still out there, it's been very cool, very wet and a lot of crop has been severely lodged so growers are dealing with quality issues, yield loss another issues.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork