Saskatchewan Agriculture reports rain continues to hamper harvesting activity and is impacting crop quality.Saskatchewan Agriculture released its crop report Thursday for the period from September 15th to September 21st.Kim Stonehouse, a Crops Extension Specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, says rain, humidity and wet field conditions have delayed the harvest but activity is starting to pick up.
Quote-Kim Stonehouse-Saskatchewan Agriculture:
Provincial harvest progress right now is at 41 percent complete and that's behind the five-year average of 82 percent and the ten-year average of 73 percent.
Currently, the southwest is at 67 percent completed, west central is at 45 percent completed, southeast is at 38 percent completed, east central is at 29 percent completed, northwest is 26 percent completed and the northeast is 24 percent completed.Harvest is starting to pick up a little bit in the province.
Rainfall and high humidity and wet field conditions really slowed the process down, both in the eastern part as well as harvesting operations in the west.
Wet conditions and high humidity are affecting crop quality in some areas, with cereals and pulse crops still in the field experiencing poor quality and sprouting.The high temperature that we had over this last weekend and hopefully this weekend and continuing on, the farmers will hopefully finish up harvesting in a timely fashion.
Yields are varying across the province.There have been a number of weather conditions that impact the yield of the crops as well as the quality of them.
Currently, the estimates indicate that on average they're at or above the five-to-ten-year averages but we won't know for sure what will be able to be harvested and what the quality of that crop will be until it's in the bin.
Stonehouse says hopefully things will stay warm and dry and the harvest will be able to swing into full gear.
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Source : Farmscape.ca