Harvesting underway in southern Sask, many farmers still waiting in more northern communities

Aug 19, 2022

PRINCE ALBERT, Sask. — Many farmers in southern Saskatchewan have started their harvest but the same can’t be said for those who work farther north.

Nearly all farmers who work north of Saskatoon are still waiting for their crops to be in a prime position for harvesting.

“We’ll probably be starting fall desiccation next week and combining is, minimum, two weeks away,” said Kerry Peterson, a Shellbrook area farmer who explained this isn’t unusual.

Despite this, he’s pretty optimistic about this year’s harvest.

The longer farmers wait, the more challenges can pop up.

“We’ve had early frost in August which has hurt the yields, canola is the big issue as it’s still not ripe enough to combine,” added Don Blocka, who farms near Prince Albert.

Dry crops are the goal for farmers. This makes it easier to store, helps avoid the chances of mold, reduces waste, and improves the quality of the crops.What can change that rather quickly is the weather. Crops are at risk of being destroyed by hail, while wet conditions can push back harvest starting dates.

Click here to see more...

Video: Wheat Yields in USA and China Threatened by Heat Waves Breaking Enzymes

A new peer reviewed study looks at the generally unrecognized risk of heat waves surpassing the threshold for enzyme damage in wheat.

Most studies that look at crop failure in the main food growing regions (breadbaskets of the planet) look at temperatures and droughts in the historical records to assess present day risk. Since the climate system has changed, these historical based risk analysis studies underestimate the present-day risks.

What this new research study does is generate an ensemble of plausible scenarios for the present climate in terms of temperatures and precipitation, and looks at how many of these plausible scenarios exceed the enzyme-breaking temperature of 32.8 C for wheat, and exceed the high stress yield reducing temperature of 27.8 C for wheat. Also, the study considers the possibility of a compounded failure with heat waves in both regions simultaneously, this greatly reducing global wheat supply and causing severe shortages.

Results show that the likelihood (risk) of wheat crop failure with a one-in-hundred likelihood in 1981 has in today’s climate become increased by 16x in the USA winter wheat crop (to one-in-six) and by 6x in northeast China (to one-in-sixteen).

The risks determined in this new paper are much greater than that obtained in previous work that determines risk by analyzing historical climate patterns.

Clearly, since the climate system is rapidly changing, we cannot assume stationarity and calculate risk probabilities like we did traditionally before.

We are essentially on a new planet, with a new climate regime, and have to understand that everything is different now.