Farmscape for September 29, 2017

Saskatchewan Agriculture reports the rain that fell over the past week delayed the harvest but it did improve topsoil moisture conditions.
Saskatchewan Agriculture's weekly crop report, released yesterday, indicates this year's harvest now stands at 78 percent complete up from 75 percent last week due to cool wet weather but still well ahead of the five year average.
Shannon Friesen, a Cropping Management Specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, says overall quality is better than has been seen in years but yields are pretty much all over the place.

Clip-Shannon Friesen-Saskatchewan Agriculture:
Even on farms we are hearing that one producer may have in one field a higher than normal average on their peas and then a couple of miles away much less than average.
It all does come down to how much moisture you did receive throughout the growing season, when you were able to seed, what type of soil you have and what type of crop you were growing as well.
But yields vary greatly across the province.
For the most part we have significantly reduced yields in the south part as well as the south part of the central region.
As we go more north, they did get a lot more moisture so yields have been above average in many cases.
Of course the extended period of very hot and dry conditions did take a large toll on a lot of the crops in the south part of the province.
In some cases we've heard that canola crops suffered as much as 75 percent less yield, which is huge for canola.
Soybean crops have been slow to mature, pods haven't filled.
The same thing with a lot of the lentil crops.
Cereals we've heard lower protein content.
They just really haven't been able to fill properly and we've had some lighter bushel weights as well.

Friesen says topsoil moisture has improved as a result of the recent rains but subsoil reserves were completely tapped out in many areas so significant amounts of rain will be needed to replenish what has been lost and help out for next spring.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork