Saskatchewan Moisture Conditions Improve Significantly

A crops extension specialist with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture reports moisture conditions across the province are improved significantly compared to the past couple of years.Unfavorable weather delayed spring seeding across Saskatchewan in the latter part of April and the beginning of May.

Matt Struthers, a crops extension specialist with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture, says seeding is most advanced in the Northwest region followed by the west central and southwest regions with the southeast and east central regions lagging behind.

Clip-Matt Struthers-Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture:

At the time being topsoil moisture across the province looks very good.A large percentage of the province is sitting at surplus or adequate levels of topsoil moisture.That's a big improvement over the last couple of years.The summer of 2021 and summer of 2022 were very dry do it's nice to see this spring we're sitting with quite a bit of moisture.It's not only good for cropland but it's going to be very good for pastures.Some of the areas in the province do have pockets that are dry, areas of the southwest and west central regions as well as the northwest.

It shouldn't be surprising that those areas that are drier got started with seeding a little bit earlier.There's still some issues out there when it comes to water.They're calling for a large rain down there in the southeast so that’s going to delay producers for quite some time, depending on the amount of rain that's received and the soil textures and the topography.There's a lot of factors that go into that.That might delay them a bit.What we need is some nice warm weather across the province to allow producers to get all that seed in the ground.When it comes to seeding deadlines, Crop Insurance has their deadlines.I believe the last one is June 20th.

It all depends on what crop you're seeding so it's important for producers to understand when those deadlines might be and to make sure that they're getting the crop in the ground before those deadlines if they're for insurance.A lot of important decisions to be made but, hopefully, the weather will turn around and hold out for us and we're able to get the seed in the ground.

Struthers says we're sitting at nine percent of the seed now in the ground in the province compared to about 23 percent in an average year but, if the we get some warm weather in the coming weeks, we'll see that number pick up quickly.