Saskatchewan Agriculture reports scattered rain showers and thunderstorms across the province over the past week slowed the harvest but the additional moisture was welcome in some regions.Saskatchewan Agriculture released its crop report yesterday for the period from August 11th to 17th.Davidson Ugheoke, a Crops Extension Specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, says the harvest was slowed last week as a result of scattered rainfall and some thunderstorms that moved across the province.
Quote-Davidson Ugheoke-Saskatchewan Agriculture:
While this moisture was welcome in certain regions, the early morning humidity shortened harvest windows and created some poor desiccation conditions. Producers noted they need some more warm temperatures to help advance a crop maturity. Harvest remains significantly lower than the 15- and 10-year averages, which is at 12 and 10 percent.
It's a little bit better than where we were last year, which at this time we were at three percent.Right now, most of the crops that's seen action are the early seeded pulse crops and then the early seeded spring wheat and of course the highest numbers or the highest percentages are the winter cereals and other crops are still developing right now.
In terms of crop damage in the course of last week, we've seen some dry conditions affecting crops.We still have some increased disease pressure and some insect activities and growers are spraying for that.We had some minor lodging damage from heat and wind and we had some gopher damages.However, in terms of the matrix of losses, we don't have those figures out yet, but in the coming weeks we should be able to have specific figures about how much damage we have.
Ugheoke says, as a result of the dry conditions, most of the crops are still maturing.He says current conditions are conducive for desiccation, which many growers are doing, and he expects harvest numbers to increase significantly, hopefully into the double digits over the coming week.
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Source : Farmscape.ca