A weather and crop specialist with CWB says the frost that’s expected this week will result in reduced crop quality and lost yield, especially in the later seeded crops.
As the result of a wet spring that delayed planting, crop development on the prairies is already running one to two weeks behind normal and rains received over the past two weeks have stalled the harvest in most areas.
Bruce Burnett, a weather and crop specialist with CWB, estimates five to ten percent of the crop, especially the late planted canola and wheat crops, are not yet mature enough to withstand a frost without losing quality and yield.
Quality to date has not been that good.
In terms of the crops grown in the southern parts of the prairies, basically south of the number one highway, those crops usually don’t experience the type of rains that we’ve received over the past two weeks and so as a result things like the lentils, the peas in the region as well as durum wheat and malting barley all have had an impact on the crop quality grown in those areas because of these rains right at the critical harvest time.
There is a forecast for some frost this week and so we are also concerned again about some of these crops that aren’t quite yet mature in western Manitoba, eastern Saskatchewan as some of those crops are likely to see some damage from this frost and in some cases even some of the mature crops will see some downgrading because of the freezing temperatures that we’re going to receive.
Burnett says we certainly need a break in the harvest weather and some drier conditions so farmers can harvest this crop.
