Limited rainfall over the past week allowed the Manitoba harvest to move forward rapidly. Anne Kirk, a Cereal Crop Specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, says a lack of precipitation allowed the harvest to move forward over the past week and farmers are now sitting at about 85 percent complete.
In most of the province we did see not a lot of precipitation this past week. Particularly in the central, eastern and Interlake regions we saw very low amounts of precipitation. In the northwest we had some precipitation with the Pas getting about 18.5 millimeters. In the southwest Russel had about seven millimeters so some precipitation in those areas that would have paused harvest for a period but not a lot of precipitation that would have caused long delays in harvest.
Crop quality is estimated to be quite good, no major issues. For yields, we are seeing some fairly good yields. For corn there’s a wide range. We’re estimating about 140 to 240 at this point. Definitely some high winds have contributed to stem breakage. Over the last two weeks we have had a couple of very windy weekends so that may be causing some issues with harvest in certain areas. For canola we’re estimating an average of 30 to 45 bushels to the acre and some of those high winds may have resulted in some canola swath blowing in places where swaths are on the ground and some lodging in standing canola. For flax we’re estimating about 20 to 40 bushels per acre. For soybeans we’re estimating an average of about 45 bushels per acre with yields ranging from 35 to 60. We’re expecting a big push for harvest, hopefully getting some of those canola and soybean fields finished and a bigger start on corn over the next week.
We are seeing fairly good harvest conditions, hopefully a big push for harvest this week as well.
~ Anne Kirk, Manitoba Agriculture
Kirk says conditions have been good for fall field work so we are seeing some fall fertilizer and herbicide applications and those will continue as the weather allows.
