The executive manager of Winter Cereals Canada reports one of western Canada’s largest winter cereal crops in years has come through the growing season in excellent condition.
Winter Cereals Canada is the umbrella organization that manages the Saskatchewan Winter Cereals Development Commission which collects research levies on winter wheat, winter triticale and fall rye in Saskatchewan and Winter Cereals Manitoba which collects levies on winter wheat in Manitoba.
Executive Manager Jake Davidson says, with the exception of problems with excess moisture in parts of Saskatchewan, the fall seeded crops are in excellent condition.
Everybody I’ve talked to is really excited.
The crop, unless you’re in some areas of Saskatchewan where they’ve got water problems, everybody is really excited.
The crops are looking really good.
I’ve been trying to put together a board meeting and I’ve got board members telling me, no we’re going to be on the combine by the third week of July.
I’ve talked to people in Saskatchewan that are thinking that they’re not going to be far behind.
Yields look really good right now.
The crops I’ve walked in the last week have good strong heads, good looking crops.
I think the winter crops everywhere just had such a good kick-butt start last year with that beautiful long fall that we had.
They got really well started, they got good root structure, we didn’t have real whopping cold that might kill them in a year that didn’t have much snow and everybody that’s in the business is really excited about the prospects of some really big yields this year.
Davidson notes acres seeded to fall planted crops last fall were up about three fold.
He says Manitoba and Saskatchewan both had around 580 thousand acres compared to about 17 thousand the previous year, in large measure because of the large number of acres left unseeded in the spring due to excess moisture.
