Farmscape for May 4, 2018

Saskatchewan Agriculture reports a cool and late spring has delayed field work across the province but seeding has started.
Saskatchewan Agriculture released its first crop report of the season yesterday.
Daphne Cruise, a Crop Extension Specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, says spring work this year has been delayed by the late snow melt.

Clip-Daphne Cruise-Saskatchewan Agriculture:
We have actually got seeding going in the province, mostly in the southwest and southern portions of the province.
The southwest, there's been pockets going for about a week now but seeding won't probably be general until this week and into next week.
It sounds like the north is a bit further behind mostly because of all the snow they've had and so they are just waiting for some fields to dry up and maybe some sloughs to go down to get as many acres as they can and it sounds like up there it'll be probably the middle of next week before they start going.
I think the difference this year is that we basically went from winter to summer within a matter of a few days.
I think basically the hold up a bit is that we weren't able to do a lot of pre-seed field work up until now and typically in the north farmers up there typically don't get going until about the first week in May into 10 days in May anyway even in a normal year.
Up until we've had a bunch of harrowing happening, maybe some pre-seed weed control as well as some pre-seed fertilizer going in and producers have been waiting for the soil to warm and the days to get a bit warmer as well so that's where we're sitting right now.

Cruise says the 10 year average for seeding progress at this point is four percent complete so things aren't that far behind and that doesn't mean lot anyway.
She notes two years ago 12 percent of the crop was seeded by now but that year harvest didn't finish until well into November because of conditions during the growing season so just because you get in early doesn't mean you'll be done harvest early.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork