Manitoba Agriculture reports warm dry weather has allowed and early start to spring seeding but now moisture is needed.
Manitoba Agriculture released its first crop report of the season Tuesday.
Dane Froese, the Industry Development Specialist-Oilseeds with Manitoba Agriculture, says a reasonably dry spell and warm spell in early April allowed producers to start scratching around in the fields and begin seeding operations on the early side of normal this year and cereals have gone in in most regions starting with wheat followed by oats and barley, then yellow peas and faba beans in certain regions and in central Manitoba corn has also been going in.
Dane Froese-Manitoba Agriculture:
Generally crop production begins with the hardier cereals, things that can tolerate cooler soil temperatures so spring wheat, oats and barley typically go in first followed by flax and corn and canola creeps in there as well.
Later on in the season we do find corn seeding quite spread out and then soybeans and sunflowers at the tail end of the seeding season.
Field conditions are good for right now.
We're able to access all the land and seedbed moisture is about an inch to an inch and a half down depending on area and soil texture so there's good moisture there for germination however it's not going to be long lived given there's not a lot of moisture reserve in the soil.
Overall we're facing a very dry spring again, similar to the past two years and we would really like to see some precipitation fall sooner rather than later to replenish stocks and allow for adequate seed germination as seeding progresses.
Froese says the trade shocks that we experienced throughout late winter and into the spring came a little bit late to impact many cropping decisions so the typical crop mix hasn't changed an awful lot.
He says most cropping decisions are fairly fixed but there has been a slight shift in acres with soybean acres reduced due to a couple of bad years with wheat, oats and, to some extent, corn increasing while canola acres are expected to be flat due to the recent troubles.
- Bruce Cochrane.
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