Saskatchewan Harvest Continues to Lag

Aug 29, 2025

The Saskatchewan harvest continues to trail the five- and 10-year averages, as hot weather, heavy thunderstorms, and pockets of hail shaped field conditions across the province last week. While some regions advanced combining, rainfall and humidity slowed operations elsewhere.

Thursday’s weekly crop report pegged the overall harvest in the province at 12% complete as of Monday. That is up from just 3% a week earlier but lags well behind last year and the five-year average of 25%, as well as the 10-year average of 21%.

The southwest leads provincial progress with 23% of crops harvested as of Monday, followed by the southeast at 14%. Central regions remain further behind, with the east-central at 11% and west-central at 6%. Harvest is just beginning in the north, where the northeast sits at 3% complete and the northwest at 2%t.

About 70% of winter wheat and 66% of fall rye are now in the bin, while 45% of peas and 35% of lentils have been combined. Harvest of spring cereals is gradually increasing, with barley at 17% complete, and durum at13%. The first acres of spring wheat, oats, and chickpeas are also starting to come off, though progress is limited. Canola was pegged at 1% harvested.

Dry conditions in much of the province this past week helped advance maturity, but thunderstorms delivered significant rain in some pockets. Nipawin recorded 42 mm, North Battleford 30 mm, and Consul 28 mm, among other notable showers. Despite scattered rainfall, provincial topsoil moisture levels dipped slightly. Cropland was rated 3% surplus, 77% adequate, 18% short, and 2% very short as of Monday, compared to 80% adequate, 10% short, 2% very short and 8% surplus.

Click here to see more...

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”