By Bruce Cochrane.
The Executive Director of Winter Cereals Canada is hopeful planting of the fall seeded cereal crops will continue past the mid-September deadline for crop insurance.
Prolonged wet weather in Manitoba and Saskatchewan has delayed this year's canola harvest leaving fewer available stubble crop acres for planting fall seeded cereal crops and made planting on the fields that are available difficult.
Jake Davidson, the Executive Director of Winter Cereals Canada, says winter cereals are always at the whim of Mother Nature when it comes to planting.
Jake Davidson-Winter Cereals Canada:
As far as winter wheat goes in both Saskatchewan and Manitoba the main magic date for insurance is the 15 of September.
Manitoba has a second date about five days later but the reality is that, depending on the season, successful seeding can be done a lot later than September 15 and both Manitoba and Saskatchewan winter cereals groups are funding a large project through our Growing Forward-2 grant to actually research how to extend the seeding period both earlier and later.
We're working at extending those dates because they're arbitrary calendar dates.
They are not related to climate.
If the weather's looking good and we haven't had too bad a fall, things are still growing out there, put it in the ground.
The 15 of September is not a day when, once it's passed, nothing happens.
It's just a technical date for seeding insurance.
Davidson say the challenge right now is getting the major cover crop, canola, harvested and getting the winter cereals planted.
He says long time winter cereal producers aren't particularly hung up on the September 15 planting deadline and he hopes to see the number of acres planted this fall increase from last year.
Source: Farmscape