By Bruce Cochrane.
The Executive Director of Winter Cereals Canada reports the abundant snow cover this winter has been a big help in protecting the fall seeded cereal crops from winter kill.
According to Statistics Canada 535 thousand acres were seeded to winter wheat across the prairies last fall, including about 235 thousand acres in Saskatchewan, an increase of about 35 thousand acres, about 130 to 140 thousand acres in Alberta, on par with average, but acres in Manitoba dropped to about 140 thousand primarily due to wet weather that delayed the harvest of the cover crops.
Jake Davidson, the Executive Director of Winter Cereals Canada says winter weather so far has been good for survival of the crops that were planted.
Jake Davidson-Winter Cereals Canada:
Everybody I've talked to so far is pretty pleased.
Right out even into the dryer areas of Saskatchewan they've been getting snow and the snow cover came and it's been slowly building.
The nice thing is we've been getting the snow cover, it was fairly warm, we got the snow and then when the temperature did these drops like we've had over the last few days where we're down in the minus 30s where we've been up higher, the crop has been protected.
The temperature under the snow stays pretty constant.
Unless people had very very high winds that's blown the snow off of the fields and left them with bare dirt because their stubble crop wasn't sufficient to hold the snow, the various crops should be doing quite well in both Manitoba and Saskatchewan at this point
Saskatchewan has less snow cover than Manitoba but still everybody that I've talked to were fairly pleased with the way their crop was looking.
Davidson notes the winter cereals face their greatest risk in the spring once the snow has melted.
He says growers will be looking for a slow steady melt, not too warm during the days and not too cold at night to allow the soil to warm up before the crops break dormancy.
Source: Farmscape