The executive director of Winter Cereals Canada blames the extremely dry weather last fall for the low survivability of this year’s fall seeded cereal crops.
Extremely dry weather last fall resulted in reduced plantings of fall seeded cereal crops in western Canada.
Jake Davidson, the executive director of Winter Cereals Canada, says the number of fall seeded cereal acres didn’t fall that much but a considerable amount of crop was lost over the winter.
Where we have taken a hit in western Manitoba and eastern Saskatchewan is with the extreme dryness.
Clip-Jake Davidson-Winter Cereals Canada:
A lot of crops did not make it and it wasn’t winter kill.
It was because they sprouted in the fall and then they desiccated and died or they never grew at all.
There was a large amount in western Manitoba and eastern Saskatchewan that was ploughed up this spring.
We don’t have a good number on that but yes we took an acreage hit.
Probably worse than the acreage hit we got from the actual seeding numbers wasn’t that scary but, because we don’t have a number of what the actual acreage was that was reseeded this spring we’re moving in a bit of a vacuum here to see what happens.
Eastern Manitoba didn’t have as much of the problem.
Western Manitoba, eastern Saskatchewan it was so dry we really know that there was a tremendous amount of crop ploughed up from Birtle through Hamiota down through Virden and right down to the border and over to Saskatchewan so it’s a bit of a mystery right now exactly what’s going to happen.
Davidson says the quality of those crops that did survive looks acceptable but he anticipates yields will be down with producers who would typically see yields in the 80 bushel range reporting yields in the 70 bushel range.
