Manitoba Agriculture reports fall harvest is now four percent complete across the province. Ann Kirk, a Cereal Crop Specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, says rain over the past week helped replenish topsoil moisture but did delay harvest.

We are seeing harvest progressing throughout the entire region. We did see a big push in the central, eastern and Interlake regions throughout the last week. In those regions we are seeing that the winter cereal harvest is nearing completion. In the southwest and northwest, we’re sitting at about 25 to 30 percent harvest completion in those regions.

For spring wheat, we see about 10 percent of the spring wheat crop off in the central and Interlake regions. The eastern, southwest and northwest range from one to five percent. We’re also seeing some barley and oats being harvested in the central, eastern and Interlake and field peas throughout the entire region. We’re sitting at about 19 percent field pea harvest complete and across the province about 52 percent of winter cereals complete.

We are seeing some early yield estimates for winter cereals and other crops. For winter cereals there’s kind of a range depending on soil conditions, how much rainfall areas received as well as the crop type. For winter wheats we’re seeing about 40 to 60 bushels per acre in drier areas and 60 to 90 in areas that received more moisture. For fall rye, it does depend a lot on if people are growing open pollinated varieties or if they’re growing hybrid varieties. For fall rye we are seeing 60 to 85 bushels per acre for open pollinated varieties and anywhere from about 80 to 130 bushels per acre for hybrid varieties. For spring wheat we’re seeing early yield estimates ranging from 45 to 75 bushels per acre, depending a lot on moisture conditions. For canola, we are seeing just a small amount of canola being harvested but preliminary yields range from 45 to 55 and then for peas we’re looking at about 60 bushels per acre.

~ Ann Kirk, Manitoba Agriculture

Kirk expects, if we don’t get a lot of moisture in the next few days, we’ll see a big push as soon as field conditions allow.