Manitoba Agriculture reports, despite unprecedented weather events over several regions over the past week, spring planting has reached 96 percent complete across the province.
Dennis Lange, a provincial pulse and soybean specialist with Manitoba Agriculture and editor of the provincial crop report, says unusual weather highlighted this past week.
Everybody’s talking about the weather. Some unprecedented weather events occurred over several regions in Manitoba this past week. Record-setting precipitation fell on areas of the south Interlake and eastern regions. There was some infrastructure and road damage, some rivers swelled and some basins are flooded. So, there’s definitely been some issues with excess moisture in some regions here right now.
But when we actually look at where seeding progress is at in the province of Manitoba this week, and that’s as of Monday I guess, we are sitting at about 96 percent complete. Most of that incomplete seeded acres are going to be in the northwest region just because they have been wet for a good part of spring and they’ve had some big rains go through there so that’s the area that’s probably the furthest behind.
It’s been a very interesting year so far. We’ve had some very unusual weather patterns. We’ve gone from cooler conditions to hot conditions back to cool and windy conditions and heavy rain so it’s been an interesting year so far.
~ Dennis Lange, Manitoba Agriculture
Lange says areas that got the excessive rainfall are still evaluating the situation but there are expectations of higher crop losses in those areas, based on the amount of rainfall. He says there have been reports of small cutworm infestations in some crops and some flea beetle activity but nothing significant and producers and agronomists are monitoring fields because weather, disease and insect patterns do change.
