The executive director of Winter Cereals Canada says weather over the next few weeks will play a key role in determining how well winter cereal crops planted last fall will survive.
Last fall farmers in Manitoba planted an estimated 435 thousand acres of winter wheat while in Saskatchewan the number of acres seeded to winter wheat hit an estimated 525 thousand acres.
Surveys conducted by the provincial agriculture departments in Saskatchewan and Manitoba have indicated winter wheat will be the most profitable cereal crop this year in Saskatchewan and the only cereal crop that will profitable in Manitoba.
Jake Davidson, the executive director of Winter Cereals Canada, says weather from here on will determine the crop’s winter survival.
Right now Manitoba, western Manitoba into Saskatchewan, let’s face it, we have snow cover and if it melts in a nice organized fashion I think we’ve got some pretty good things to look forward to this year.
I think the big thing is ,from here on in, a slow thaw kind of steady.
We don’t want especially, when the snow cover gets down, we don’t want to have any bad events like three days of zero, plus one, plus two and then minus 20 which could happen this weekend according to the forecast, another cold snap.
We don’t want the ground getting damp and then freezing rock hard and freezing the crown of the plant.
We want things to just kind of move along and slowly have the soil temperature come up and comes out of its dormancy and starts growing.
Davidson notes, in April, growers can start to assess winter survival by collecting a few plants, brining them into the house and checking to see how they well they start to grow.
Right now he says it’s just a matter of sitting back and waiting to see what happens.
