With the is year's harvest closing in on completion Saskatchewan Agriculture reports variable quality and yields.Saskatchewan Agriculture released its crop report Thursday for the period from September 29th to October 5th.Kim Stonehouse, a Crops Extension Specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, says with farmers starting to report completion of this year's harvest, we're seeing variability in both yield and quality of the grains.
Quote-Kim Stonehouse-Saskatchewan Agriculture:
The warm and dry weather that we've had now for the past couple of weeks has really allowed harvest to progress very well.It wasn't without its challenges, of course.There's humidity and dew in the mornings, making for very short combining days.But still, it's progressed the harvest up to 82 percent, up from 63 percent from the previous week, with many producers indicating that they're either finished or going to finish fairly soon.
Harvest remains, of course, behind the five-year average of 97 percent, but it's only slightly behind the 10-year average of 88 percent.This week, we asked about the quality of hard red spring wheats.While it varies throughout the province due to the variable amounts of rainfall levels, wet conditions and pest activity during the growing season, the average quality this year appears to be lower than historical averages.
Right now, on average in the province, we're seeing about 31 percent that is grading number one, 44 percent that is grading number two, 19 percent grading number three and six percent grading as feed.For yields, they're slightly better than the last report that we produced a month ago on yields.The average provincial yields remain at or above historical averages for most crop types.However, they vary throughout the province due to the different levels of rainfall and agronomic challenges throughout the year.
The warm and dry weather that we've had now for the past couple of weeks has reallyStonehouse acknowledges, it's hard to say what the weather will bring but a lot of producers will be hoping to wrap things up this week, but the weather doesn't look like it's going to be very accommodating after this weekend.
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Source : Farmscape.ca