Saskatchewan Harvest in Full Swing but Behind the Five and Ten-Year Averages

Saskatchewan Agriculture reports this year's harvest is in full swing but heavy thunderstorms with strong winds and large hail stalled operations over the past week in much of the province. Saskatchewan Agriculture released its weekly crop report yesterday for the period from August 19th to 25th.

Tyce Masich, a crops extension specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, says with the hot weather farmers did make inroads last week but progress remains well behind the five and ten-year averages.

Quote-Tyce Masich-Saskatchewan Agriculture:

Harvest is 12 percent complete as of  this report but it's still behind normal harvest progress for this time of year.Typically, about 25 percent of the crop is harvested in Saskatchewan this week but we're still a little bit behind.Most of the harvest taking place is still in those southern regions but most producers in a lot of areas have started taking off their first acres of pulses and spring cereal crops.

Along with harvest producers are also swathing and desiccating their crops.There wasn't a lot of rainfall in the province, just some scattered moisture in different areas but there were a lot of thunderstorms in different parts of the province and unfortunately that brought strong winds which lodged some crops in different areas and it also brought hail in quite a few areas.

Hail damage was fairly isolated but still there was notable crop damage from hail.That's kind of unfortunate but, in terms of soil moisture levels, soil moisture remains about the same as it did last week.It might have dropped a little but with the dry conditions in much of the province but still a lot of the provincial soils have adequate moisture for crop growth, which is definitely a good sign.
It's just too bad we didn't have this a little bit earlier.

Masich says a lot of the winter wheat and fall rye have been grading in the top two grades which is good news but there has been a lot of variability with the east central and southeast regions reporting the highest quality while quality is lower in the west central and southwest, possibly due to rainfall in July and August.He says the forecast is calling for fairly warm weather and minimal rainfall, which should provide good harvest conditions in the coming week.
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