Rain and Snow Halts Saskatchewan Harvest

Saskatchewan Agriculture reports producers made solid progress harvesting remaining crops and got plenty of field work done last week, before rain and snow halted operations in many areas. Saskatchewan Agriculture released its crop report Thursday for the period from October 7th to October 13th.Tyce Masich, a Crops Extension Specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, says producers were making excellent progress up until the weekend.

Quote-Tyce Masich-Saskatchewan Agriculture:

Late last week it was pretty dry. It was fairly nice weather but once the weekend hit, particularly on Sunday, much of province had rainfall and then some of that rain turned into snow so there was quite a bit of precipitation over the weekend which halted any field work that producers were doing. As of this week 98 percent of crops have been off so most crops are off the field right now so producers were mainly working mainly to apply fertilizer, spray for weeds, harrow, that sort of thing.

In terms of crops that are left out in the field, there's a little bit of canola, mustard, flax, chick peas and soybeans that are left out in the field but most crops are off in the province and producers were mainly just working on field work but the moisture put a stop to that temporarily.Most producers see the rainfall and the snow that we got over the weekend as welcome because soil moisture conditions were starting to get pretty dry in the province.

They were happy to see some moisture before winter really sets in.Prior to last week, less than half of provincial topsoils were adequate for moisture and there were definitely more soils out there that were short of moisture than had adequate, but with the moisture we had over the weekend, approximately 60 percent of provincial topsoils have adequate moisture.That's definitely decent shape heading into the fall but producers are hoping to get more rain before freeze up and then plenty of snow this winter to further increase those soil moisture levels.

Masich acknowledges the fact that the few crops remaining in the fields got rained on and then snowed on will likely result in some downgrading but that's not too many.He says a lot of the snow that did fall has melted so producers are hopeful they can get back out into the fields in the next week or two before winter really sets in to wrap up any fertilizer application or field work.