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Many producers halt harvest operations, precipitation welcomed

Many producers experienced cool, damp weather this past week which halted or slowed their harvest operations until conditions improved. Other producers that were able to continue either finished their harvest or are very close to doing so. Harvest progress for the province is at 73 per cent, up from 64 per cent last week and ahead of the five-year (2017-2021) average of 68 per cent. An additional 18 per cent of the crop is ready to be swathed or straight-cut.

Harvest is most advanced in the southwest region, where 96 per cent of the crop is now combined. The west-central region has 89 per cent combined and the southeast 65 per cent. The northwest region has 63 per cent combined, the northeast 58 per cent and the east-central 52 per cent.

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

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.