Manitoba Agriculture reports intense rain across much of the province delayed the harvest this past week. Sonia Wilson, an oilseed specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, says there are some variations but harvest progress at this point is looking similar to our five and ten-year average.
This past week we had some very heavy rains come through most of the regions so we saw especially severe storms, heavy rains in the central and Interlake regions with Portage la Prairie receiving over 80 millimeters in just one hour. As well, areas such as Stonewall, Selkirk, etcetera received quite a bit of rainfall as well. We had high winds and so there was definitely some pausing for harvest operations with this amount of rainfall. But we did have some warmer days as well which helped dry out some areas so that harvest could progress but definitely had a lot of rainfall.
All the winter crops are pretty much finished other than some in the northwest. Spring wheat, we are pretty much finished in the eastern and central regions. The southwest and northwest are behind as well. Barley as well made quite a bit of progress and oats in central and eastern, but we just had a little bit of barley come off the northwest. Field peas are pretty much done other than in the northwest. And so, I would say most producers are currently harvesting their spring cereals and also turning to canola at this point as well.
~ Sonia Wilson, Manitoba Agriculture
Wilson says growers are reporting average winter cereal crop yields, average to above average spring cereal yields in most regions with good quality, average pea yields and good quality and there haven’t been a lot of reports on canola.
