Manitoba Agriculture reports spring planting has moved from about 10 percent compete to about 48 percent complete over the past week.
Pam de Rocquigny, a cereal crop specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, reports farmers have been busy spraying fertilizer, doing pre-seed burn-off and planting moving from about 10 percent complete one week ago to approximately 48 percent complete this week due to warm temperatures and minimal precipitation.
Just maybe one year ago, in 2015, in terms of the second issue of the crop report that came out in 2015, so about May 11 last year we were looking at seeding progress at about 55 percent complete so we’re pretty close to where we were last year and that’s probably a little bit above what we typically see as a five year average.
We tend to see some variability in terms of when we can get going in terms of seeding operations in the province. Largely it’s just due to weather conditions, how wet field conditions are and soil temperatures as well and that can vary from year to year.
We have tended to see that variability but for the last year and this year we’ve had a really good start. We’re actually starting to see some of the crops emerge as well that have been seeded. Cereal crops are coming up, some of the canola, corn, peas are starting to emerge as well. A lot of that is just due to the fact that a lot of it was recorded to be seeded into good soil moisture.
We’ve had warm temperatures so we’ve had some quick emergence as well which is always something we aim for in terms of starting the growing season off right. So far so good. Some areas could use a little bit of precipitation so we’ll see what the forecast holds for this week. I know they’re calling for some but we’ll wait to see how much we actually do get and where we get it and what kind of impact that will have on seeding progress across the province. ~ Pam de Rocquigny – Manitoba Agriculture
De Rocquigny says some areas are reporting drier conditions and some producers have put some seeding operation and fertilizer applications waiting for rain while some other areas are waiting for fields to dry up enough to start planting.
