Farmscape for September 28, 2018

Saskatchewan Agriculture reports cool damp weather over the past two to three weeks is downgrading the quality of crops still to be harvested.
Saskatchewan Agriculture released its weekly crop report yesterday.
Daphne Cruise, a Crops Extension Specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, reports snow in the central region and rain across the province have slowed harvesting and crops that are coming off are being dried or aerated.

Clip-Daphne Cruise-Saskatchewan Agriculture:
We have been getting indications of some grade losses occurring especially because it's been two or three weeks in some cases of some cool and damp weather where that crop has been sitting waiting for the combines.
There has been some sprouting occurring.
Crop reporters have indicated as well some bleaching which obviously causes some downgrades and potentially maybe some lighter bushel weights going into the combine as well.
In the south, we didn't get a lot of rain so the yields were definitely below average but the quality was there.
Most of the south has the majority in the bin but there is still an amount out there.
Some of that quality now is starting to degrade.
As well, the north, they did have some pretty good rains in the majority of the northern regions and so the yields were there and quality was also there because we didn't have a lot of insect pressures or a lot of disease pressures.
There were some isolated pockets where producers were controlling diseases but in general it wasn't a very big disease year either so going into this past three week weather delay things were looking pretty good for quality and now that it's been sitting out there the last three weeks, definitely some quality issues there and most likely some grade losses, especially when it comes to the cereals.
With about 50 percent of the wheat crop in there's still a quite a bit out there that needs to come in.

Cruise says, if there is one silver lining, the rain has significantly helped topsoil moisture conditions particularly in those very dry areas in the west central and southern regions.
She says there isn't yet enough to get to the subsoil so we'll have to see what the winter brings in terms of snow and hopefully that will replenish the soil for next spring's crop.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork