Farmscape for August 24, 2018

Saskatchewan Agriculture reports crop yields so far have been down but crop quality has been good.
Saskatchewan Agriculture released its weekly crop report yesterday.
Shannon Friesen, a Crops Extension Specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, says harvest is well underway with 16 percent of the crop in the bin, up from five percent last week and well ahead of the five year average of just seven percent.

Clip-Shannon Friesen-Saskatchewan Agriculture:
Yields vary greatly so far.
We really had a summer of a lot of scattered showers.
Some areas got quite a lot of moisture while others were missed completely.
Some areas in the south and central parts of the province really have not received any significant moisture in at least a month and in some cases even up to two months so yields range anywhere from about average to well below.
However we have heard many reports of some pulse crops as well as some cereal crops yielding a lot more than they initially though but, of course, the reverse is also true where some of those crops looked really and as soon as they were cut into they weren't as good as we would have hoped.
The good news is that the quality so far has been good but we have had some reports of barley coming off light, some of those cereal crops as well being smaller and a little bit shrunken.
Some of that could be due to a lot of the hot temperatures that we have had over the last couple of weeks.
For the most part disease has been minimal although we have heard reports of ergot and fusarium in some areas of the east but things quality wise are looking really good.

Friesen says 75 percent of the fall rye, 57 percent of the winter wheat, 55 percent of the field peas and lentils, 24 percent of the mustard, 16 percent of the barley, 14 percent of the durum, five percent of the spring wheat, five percent of the soybeans and three percent of the canola have now been combined.
Additionally, she says, 29 percent of the canola and 14 percent of the mustard have been swathed or is ready to straight cut.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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