Saskatchewan Agriculture reports the province's farmers are disappointed with this year's crops but relieved that things weren't worse.
Saskatchewan Agriculture released its final crop report of the season yesterday.
Tyce Masich, a Crops Extension Specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, says producers were able to get their crops off well before the heavy frosts set in.
Quote-Tyce Masich-Saskatchewan Agriculture:
Starting in May when producers were seeing it was very cool and wet so there were some seeding delays and also the early season cool temperatures specifically delayed crop development in the first two months of the growing season, which wasn't great for crops but the moisture did allow them to be well established for the lack of moisture in July and August that we saw.
In July and August there were hot and dry conditions throughout most of Saskatchewan which really hurt the early season yield potential that producers were expecting.
Early season, with all of the moisture that we had, there were more reports of early season root rot in crops which hurt crop establishment early in the season and then, as the season progressed and things got warmer and drier, that's when the grasshoppers really came out and started to feed on crops.
I know in the west and southwest producers were spraying for grasshoppers specifically and in areas of the province that would have gotten rainfall in the beginning July when canola was full canopy there were a lot of producers spraying for sclerotinia stem rot and there were some reports of sclerotinia stem rot in Saskatchewan but I think overall it had a pretty minimal impact on yields this year.
The biggest thing was the hot conditions in July really heat blasted a lot of canola which would have resulted in most of the yield loss for canola and other crops as well.
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