Manitoba Harvest Nearing Completion

Manitoba Agriculture reports, for the most part, this year's harvest has gone smoothly and should wrap up over the next week or so. Manitoba Agriculture's weekly crop report, released yesterday, indicates this year's harvest is now sitting at 93 percent complete across the province and should be pretty much complete over the next week or so.

Dennis Lange, a pulse and soybean specialist with Manitoba Agriculture and editor of the provincial crop report, says yields varied considerably but overall producers should be pretty happy with this year's crops.

Quote-Dennis Lange-Manitoba Agriculture:

We'll start off the pulse and soybeans right now. Quite a range this year. We should look at maybe an average of somewhere between 40 and 45 across the province. The central region on the soybeans, yields have been quite good, anywhere from 45 to in some cases 60 bushels and acre so I think we're going to see a good strong average this year, in that 40 to 45 range.

Quality overall has been good, no issues with frost what so ever.Other crops like dry beans for example, we're kind of wrapped up there.Yields were better than expected.We're going to be above average I think across the board.

There are some quality issues there with the wet weather that we had in the central region in early September but overall, the crop is definitely quite marketable.Across the various regions things are wrapping up pretty good. When we look at the Interlake region which was further behind for most of the season because of the rainfall and delayed seeding, they're about 88 percent complete, mostly the last stage of corn and sunflowers there.

The northwest region is also about 86 percent complete. They're finishing up some of their crops as well but overall crop quality was quite good, variable in some situations where oats in some cases where lighter.But cereals, wheat, protein content was good for the most part.No major issues with crops this year.

Lange says the weather forecast looks pretty good so, barring any unforeseen circumstances, things should wrap up over the next couple of weeks.