Farmscape for October 24, 2017

Saskatchewan Agriculture reports, with the 2017 harvest virtually complete, the province's farmers will be looking for as much rain as they can get between now and freeze up to prepare the soil for next year's crop.
Saskatchewan Agriculture's weekly crop report, released on Thursday, indicates the 2017 provincial harvest is very close to wrapping up with 98 percent of the crop combined.
Shannon Friesen, a Cropping Management Specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, says, with the drier conditions many producers in the north, particularly in the west central region, have been able to reclaim land lost to flooding over the last number of years and over the past couple of weeks farmers have been busy in the fields with fall work combining any remaining crop and putting down fertilizer.

Clip-Shannon Friesen-Saskatchewan Agriculture:
We are looking for rain and as much as we can get, mostly in the south part of the province but areas of the central region are in also dire need of some moisture prior to freeze up.
We are hopeful that even though it has been warm and dry and we've been able to get a lot of field work done we are looking for significant amounts of moisture, hopefully even some of that heavy wet snow prior to freeze up.
For the most part the south is looking for more and the north is kind of half and half right now, all depending on where you are.
At the moment subsoil moisture on cropland is rated as 43 percent adequate, 40 percent short and 17 percent very short.
On hay land and pasture it is 33 percent adequate, 45 percent short and 22 percent very short.

Friesen says growers will be looking for good weather with some nice rains to head into the winter and good amounts of snow over the winter to get the soil moisture levels recharged for next year.
She acknowledges, even with lots of rain between now and freeze up and snow over the winter, timely rains will still be needed next spring.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork