Manitoba Agriculture Food and Rural Initiatives reports, for the most part, cereal crop yields across the province this year have been excellent.
Excellent weather conditions over the past few weeks have allowed Manitoba farmers to move ahead quickly with harvest.
Pam de Rocquigny, a cereal crop specialist with Manitoba Agriculture Food and Rural Initiatives, says depending on the region anywhere from 75 to 80 percent of the spring cereal crop harvest is now complete, winter wheat is off and in the bins and the canola harvest is also well under way.
For the most part I think guys have been relatively happy with the yields they’ve been seeing.
We’ve had some really fantastic yields reported to us.
For spring wheat we’ve had yields range from as low as 30 which is kind of below the ten year average all the way up to 85 bushels an acre which is obviously fantastic for spring wheat.
Even for some of the higher yielding general purpose type wheats we’ve been hearing yields of 100 bushels an acre so that’s really fantastic.
For barley the same story, anywhere from 60 to even upwards of 140.
For oats 85 bushels to upwards of 180 bushels per acre are being reported.
Obviously for the most part what we’ve been hearing are yields are good, guys are happy.
Obviously the lower yields are coming from areas that maybe had excess moisture issues early in the spring, especially in the southwest, northwest areas of the province.
The good news also as well, in terms of quality, is the quality has been really good from what we’ve been hearing.
The protein levels are a little bit lower this year, anywhere from 12 to 14 percent, but the quality has been good so that’s good news as well so not only high yields but for the most part good quality as well.
De Rocquigny notes the impact of a light frost this past weekend is still being assessed.
She says most of the cereal crops are past the point where they would be damaged but there might be some impact on the longer season crops such as grain corn, sunflowers or soybeans.
