Manitoba Agriculture reports, despite highly variable crop yields this year, crop quality has been good.
Anne Kirk, a provincial cereal crop specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, says rain did slow things up.
Last week we had quite a bit of harvest progress at the beginning of the week and later in the week, onto the weekend we had showers in many areas which delayed harvest progress, so overall harvest progress is at 76 percent across the province, which is ahead of the five-year average of 64 percent.
In general, we’ve had very good harvest progress this year. We have seen a wide variability in yields this year. I think the biggest factor in yield variability is moisture. For example, for spring wheats we’re seeing most yields ranging from 35 to 80 bushels per acre. We’re seeing some lows in that 10 bushel per acre range in very dry areas and highs of 90 bushels per acre in areas that received more moisture, so a pretty wide range of yields.
For spring wheat, we are seeing good quality, protein levels are fairly high, ranging from about that 13.5 percent and higher and mostly grading one or two.
For most crops we are seeing quite a big range in yields. For example, for canola we’re seeing yields ranging from about 20 to 60 bushels per acre.
For soybeans, it’s really dependent on when harvest happened. From the earlier harvested fields that ran out of moisture a bit sooner, yields were ranging from about 20 to 30 where as soybeans harvested more recently were ranging from about 30 to 60 bushels per acre.
It’s hard to pinpoint an average on the province just because we are seeing such big variability depending on rainfall.
~ Anne Kirk, Manitoba Agriculture
Kirk says we have seen downgrading in spring cereals due to crops sitting in wet fields and we are seeing blackbird damage starting in sunflowers and in some oat crops. She says we have a lot of canola and soybeans that are ripe and ready to come off but harvest progress over the coming week will depend on rainfall.
