Manitoba Agriculture reports farmers across the province were making excellent harvest progress early last week before heavy rains and strong winds brought things to a halt.
Anne Kirk, a cereal crop specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, says heavy weekend rain and strong winds halted field work.
For the first part of the week, Monday to Thursday last week we had very good harvest progress. Conditions were dry and quite warm so harvest progress was good. Over the weekend we did see the forecast change so we did have sometimes heavy precipitation which was sometimes heavy and very strong winds in the central, eastern and Interlake regions so we did have higher amounts of precipitation in those regions. The northwest go a little bit less precipitation. The highest the northwest got was about 18 millimetres in Birch River but other than that we did see some higher precipitation over the weekend which put a stop to harvest progress for the time being.
Right now, we’re looking at harvesting about 86 percent complete, so basically complete for the spring cereals, field peas. Canola we’re looking at about 92 percent complete, soybeans about 70 percent, dry beans 90 percent. About 84 percent complete for potatoes and grain corn has just started so we’re looking at about eight percent complete for grain corn. We’re nearing the end of harvest and it’s really just looking at some of our longer season crops like flax, sunflowers and grain corn are the majority of acres to come off at this point.
~ Anne Kirk, Manitoba Agriculture
Kirk says remaining cereal crops will likely be downgraded due to weathering and some sprouting, but most of those crop are already in the bin and, as for other crop types, there are no quality concerns at this point. She says, once fields dry up, there will be a big push to finish off the harvest.
