Farmscape for May 3, 2019

Saskatchewan Agriculture reports, with five percent of this year's crops planted, the pace of spring seeding can be expected to speed up as weather conditions improve.
Saskatchewan Agriculture's first crop report of the season, released yesterday for the period from April 23rd to 29th indicates farmers have been able to seed five per cent of the 2019 crop, slightly ahead of the five-year average of three per cent.
Cory Jacob, a Crops Extension Specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, says many producers have indicated seeding will begin in the coming weeks as weather conditions improve.

Clip-Cory Jacob-Saskatchewan Agriculture:
I think for a mix of crops this year it'll be a typical cereal, oilseed and pulse year.
I haven't heard too many producers deviating too far from their normal rotations.
Obviously there are some factors with markets that might be influencing or having producers giving a second look and second thought to their rotations.
Field conditions were a bit on the drier side prior to this moisture that we received last week.
Typically in the northern part of the province we were seeing kind of more adequate to normal moisture conditions.
That would have been perhaps a little bit wetter conditions seeding into but nothing overly saturated for reports on soils.
Typically first we see crops such as field peas, chick peas and then cereal crops such as wheat and barley would be seeded early.
Schedule wise, once conditions improve, we will expect producers to be out in the fields and probably in the next few weeks we might see some producers in the southwest even wrapping up seeding and then producers, as we go farther north into the northwest and northeast, get a good start on seeding as well.

Jacob reminds producers to be safe around power lines and to pace themselves to have a good seeding season.
He says there's plenty of time to get the crops into the ground.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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