The executive director of Winter Cereals Canada says this year’s late canola harvest could result in a reduction in the number of acres of winter wheat planted this fall in western Canada.
This year’s fall weather has been ideal for planting winter wheat and the other fall seeded cereal crops.
Jake Davidson, the executive director of Winter Cereals Canada, says for those famers who had the land base to seed winter wheat the warm stretch definitely provided the opening to get the crop into the ground so the opportunity was there but in many areas the question has been where to plant.
It tends to be a crop seeded into canola stubble and there’s a tremendous amount of canola still sitting in the swath in western Manitoba.
I think possibly eastern Manitoba got it off ahead of time.
But I’ve got a field just within a mile of me that still hasn’t been touched so we know there’s no winter wheat going to get seeded into there but there’s always, like I say, the true believers.
They’ll put it into chem fallow, they’ll put it into peas, some people are trying barley stubble so we’re not as reliant on canola stubble as we used to be but the lateness of the canola crop will have an effect on people that have not got the experience with the crop.
They’re going to look and they’re going to say it’s past September 15, it’s past the extra couple of days that we can go with the crop insurance.
Where as the believers, they may stick it in the ground and if they’re out in western Manitoba today and they put it in in the last day or two we got rain so they may have just what they need.
But if you’re not familiar with the crop, haven’t got the confidence and the agronomy practices yet you might not plant and so we may see slightly reduced acreage.
Davidson notes there has been good demand for winter wheat seed, good demand for the new varieties flourish and moats and seed growers have reported they’ve had lots of calls.
