Manitoba Agriculture reports rain slowed harvest progress across the province over the past week and is reducing the quality of crops still in the fields.
Anne Kirk, a Cereal Crop Specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, says an estimated 43 percent of this year’s crop had been harvested as of Monday and a lot of people did get back into the fields at the beginning of the week once things dried out, so that number will change for next week’s crop report.
We did have rains throughout much of Manitoba over the past week. Most regions received more than eight millimeters of rain but, depending on the region, some areas received more than 30 millimeters and the Miniota area had about 78 millimeters of rain so rain across the province, which once again delayed harvest activities in many areas.
We really didn’t see a big jump in harvest progress from last week to this week. It’s just been a slow week in terms of harvest progress. The moisture is definitely affecting quality, especially with those cereal crops that are still out in the field.
Earlier harvested cereal crops had very good quality but, the longer they sit in the field, there’s more risk of sprouting. There’s been a lot of straw breakdown so a lot of lodging and difficult to combine crops and then also weathering on the seeds so some seed discoloration.
I can’t give a good estimate for sure on what percent of the crop would be sprouted or downgraded that’s out in the field but that is a concern, and crops are coming off in poor condition in some of those areas.
~ Anne Kirk, Manitoba Agriculture
Kirk says in some cases people haven’t been in the field for a week and a half or so. She says, with rain predicted over the next few days, how much progress we see over the next week will depend on how much more rain we get.
