The executive manager of Winter Cereals Canada says the abundant snow cover and the late spring melt will protect this year’s winter cereal crops from the freeze thaw cycles that can cause substantial damage.
As a result of reluctance on the part of some farmers to plant into dry soil, the number of acres seeded to winter cereal crops last fall in Manitoba and Saskatchewan fell by about 15 percent.
Jake Davison, the executive manager of Winter Cereals Canada, says we’re cursing the snow because at this time last year people were golfing but underneath that snow the crop that did come up will be dormant and well protected.
We worry about a hard frost at night where the temperature goes up in the day time and the snow starts to melt and then bang it goes down fairly far and the surface moisture freezes, that’s hard on winter wheat and the other fall crops.
But the way it’s going this year the melt is quite slow, it’s very gradual and the crop is underneath this snow and it’s still protected.
I’m thinking that by the time that we do get a real melt I’m a little worried kind of all of a sudden it’s going to be 15 or 20 above and it’s going to go fast.
I’m hoping it doesn’t have the sharp nighttime drops that can actually do more damage than winter kill.
True winter kill, if there’s no snow and the wind blows and the soil freezes up, is one thing but there’s as much damage done in the spring with freeze thaw freeze thaw.
Possibly with this amount of snow we’ve got protecting the crop, when ever it decides to warm up, we might get right past that problem and bang it’s going to be wet.
We’ve got a lot of snow.
The winter wheat is going to suck that moisture up and it’s going to grow and it’s going to be looking good when people are standing there wondering when they’re going to get on the field just to get their spring crops in.
Davidson says winter wheat could be the most profitable crop per acre depending on what happens with the weather through the mid-western United States down into Texas.
