Manitoba Agriculture reports rainfall over the past week will help replenish soil moisture, allow fall tillage to move forward and benefit some of the later seeded crops.
Manitoba Agriculture’s weekly crop report, released Monday, indicates the canola and cereal crop harvests are nearing completion, the exception being some areas in the southwest and northwest where some late seeded canola still needs to be harvested.
Anne Kirk, a Cereal Crop Specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, says we received rain at the end of the week and over the weekend across pretty much the whole province so harvest has been delayed due to that rainfall.
Over the past few days the amount of rain we’ve seen has ranged from about seven to about 45 millimeters. Pretty much in every region of the province there’s been a pretty large variation in how much rainfall they’ve actually gotten.
In terms of the rain, it has been really beneficial because we have very dry soil moisture conditions in many areas of the province so it’s nice to get some of that rain in the fall to replenish some of the soil moisture.
We’ve also heard of producers holding back on doing fall tillage operations because of the very dry soils so getting some of that rain should help with some fall tillage once it dries out enough to get back in the fields. And it’s possible that some of those later seeded corn crops or sunflowers may also benefit from some of that rainfall.
Anne Kirk-Manitoba Agriculture
Kirk says yields and quality have generally been very good throughout the province for cereal crops and canola but there has been considerable variability. She says canola yields have ranged from about 40 to 65 bushels per acre with very good quality, wheat has ranged from about 50 to 100 bushels, barley about 60 to 120 and oats from about 70 to 180 bushels so we are seeing some wide variation depending on moisture. Kirk also says that soybean yields are lower than the past couple of years ranging from about 25 to 40 bushels and flax is ranging from about 25 to 32 bushels per acre.
