Manitoba Agriculture reports, despite variable amounts of rain across the province over the past week, farmers were able to get more seed into the ground and planting is now only slightly behind the five-year average.
Anne Kirk, a cereal crop specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, says conditions are wet throughout the province.
We had some precipitation over the past seven days. Much of the regions didn’t get a huge amount of rain but amounts ranged from about two millimeters to 51 millimeters. The eastern and northwest regions had the most precipitation over the past week so the total precipitation this year ranges from about 51 millimeters to about 93 millimeters at the weather stations.
All regions of the province have accumulated more than 100 percent of normal precipitation based on 30-year averages and most areas have exceeded 150 percent of normal precipitation so we are fairly wet throughout the province. In some areas of the province that moisture is very welcome and in other areas of the province it’s a bit too much in order to proceed with typical seeding operations and producers have to wait quite a bit for fields to dry.
We did have progress with seeding. Seeding progress is about 92 percent complete now and that’s just slightly behind the five-year average of 96 percent complete for the second week of June. We are starting to see good crop growth out there and it’s great to see that there’s more acres being put into the ground.
~ Anne Kirk, Manitoba Agriculture
Kirk says flea beetle activity has increased in some areas and there have been some insecticide applications but that hasn’t been widespread and weed growth has been strong so herbicide applications have been ongoing. She says, in areas where the crop insurance deadlines have passed for crops like soybeans and corn, farmers are expected to shift to canola and she expects quite a few acres of canola to go in over the next week.
