Manitoba Agriculture reports drier weather over the past week has allowed the harvest to move forward. Anne Kirk, a cereal crop specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, says the past seven days were drier than previous weeks.
This last week was fairly dry in much of the province, so we did see a jump on harvested acres. Winter wheat and fall rye are nearing completion in the central and eastern regions, while there’s still some winter cereal crops to be harvested in the southwest, northwest and Interlake. We’re also seeing a significant amount of acres of spring cereals being harvested in the central and eastern regions as well, with a start of spring cereals in the southwest and Interlake and then a good start on field peas as well.
For rainfall we are seeing kind of a mix throughout the province. Parts of the central and eastern regions are actually quite dry, so they’re below 80 percent of the 30-year average so those areas would have been happy with more rainfall throughout the growing season. We are seeing some drier areas and we’re also seeing some areas like the south Interlake and parts of the northwest and southwest regions are seeing more rainfall than normal. Particularly the south Interlake has accumulations over 120 percent of normal.
In the areas with excess moisture, some of those areas are suffering from some drowned out areas or fields that were completely flooded out. Then in those areas with excess moisture, it’s a bit tricky for crop harvest because we are seeing some staginess or areas where we are still seeing some green growth where other crops are closer to maturity. Kind of a mixed bag out there and it just really depends on what part of the province you’re in.
~ Anne Kirk, Manitoba Agriculture
Kirk says so far, the quality of cereals and the peas are generally good. She says it’s too early to get a good handle on yields we are hearing winter cereals are slightly below average, spring cereals are generally below average and the majority of peas are reported as average.
