A weather and crop specialist with CWB reports, despite the late start to planting, this year’s crop production is significantly higher than ever produced on the Prairies.
About 95 percent of the prairie harvest is now complete with the remaining five percent scattered around various locations including western Manitoba, eastern Saskatchewan and across parts of the northern grain belt.
Bruce Burnett, a weather and crop specialist with CWB says 2013 was a different type of year in terms of growing conditions but fortunately most of the crop has been harvested and most areas are reporting above normal yields.
Certainly I think the first thing that stands out is the production.
Certainly this year’s production is significantly higher than we’ve ever produced on the prairies in terms of over all production with both the record wheat and canola production.
That’s I think the first thing that stands out.
The second thing that stands out is, despite the fact that the crop was sown late and certainly had some very cool temperatures in the middle of the growing season we still managed to get most of the crop harvested without any frost damage and I think that again is just the cards aligning on a positive side for the prairies this year.
If we hadn’t had that stretch of weather in late August and September where we saw significantly above normal temperatures we could have seen a quite a different story in terms of the quality of this year’s crop.
Burnett says, in terms of supply we’re looking at a 33 million ton wheat crop, a 16 million ton canola crop and a slightly over nine million ton barley crop.
He says that suggests we’ll have ample feed grains around this year and the quality is also quite good.
