Manitoba Agriculture Food and Rural Development reports this year’s fall seeded crops are showing above average yields, and coming off the fields in very good condition.
The 2015 Manitoba harvest was slowed over the past week due to the continuing wet conditions in some areas but, where field and weather conditions allowed, there was progress made.
Pam de Rocquigny, a cereal crop specialist with Manitoba Agriculture Food and Rural Development, says an anticipated return to warm dry weather will be welcome.
Winter cereals are coming off right now so that includes crops such as our winter wheat and our fall rye.
We do have some preliminary yield numbers for our winter wheat and they’re ranging anywhere from 55 to upwards of 90 bushels per acre in terms of yield, so some really good looking yields out there for our winter wheat and so far we’ve been hearing good quality.
That’s always good to hear in terms of not only yields looking average to a little bit above average but we also have good quality with it as well.
Often quality is associated with disease pressure.
Last year, in 2014, our winter wheat was definitely impacted, the quality of it was definitely impacted by fusarium head blight and that resulted in some downgrading due to fusarium damaged kernels.
This year, in 2015, we’re hearing so far that we’ve seen low levels of fusarium head blight in both the winter wheat and the spring wheat crops.
We’ve heard some spring wheat has been taken off as well as some barley.
We don’t have really firm yield numbers for those crops yet, but as producers move into those crop types, we’ll definitely get a better handle on what some of those yields are.
In terms of other harvest operations, producers are busy swathing or doing some pre-harvest management as well on some of their spring cereal crops and their canola as well.
I think the weather that’s forecasted this week, and I don’t want to scare it away, but the warmer and drier weather is definitely going to be welcomed as producers continue with their harvest.
De Rocquigny says harvest progress is running about normal but that will depend on crop type as we continue to move forward.
