Manitoba Agriculture reports rainfall was the biggest factor affecting this year’s harvest. Sonia Wilson, an oilseed specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, reports, with the harvest sitting at 97 percent complete, the biggest factor this year has been precipitation.
We did see larger amounts of rainfall or precipitation at the end which definitely stretched out the harvest season. We also saw some of the soybeans maturing later so all of those things extended out the harvest season this year. Depending on the region, our corn is at 71 percent complete and sunflowers are at 37 percent complete provincially. When we look at some of our long-term averages for the growing season, we’re seeing that most of Agro Manitoba had over 220 millimeters of precipitation but that’s across the whole season. The exception to that was the Interlake and a small part of the northwest region. In general, those areas are sitting at below 70 percent of their average compared to the 30-year average.
The rest of the regions, the southwest, other parts of the northwest and central, had generally 100 percent of their normal levels of precipitation since May 1st. The other long-term average I’ll point out is our growing degree days. In general, for most of Agro Manitoba our growing degree day accumulations are somewhere between 105 percent and 120 percent of normal.
~ Sonia Wilson, Manitoba Agriculture
Wilson says there were some areas that received timely rainfall and others that didn’t and crops in those drier areas struggled. She says, because of the rainfall that has been received recently, most areas of the province are heading toward freeze up with wet to optimal moisture conditions.
