Manitoba Agriculture reports rain that delayed the harvest across much of the province last week will give crops that have not yet fully matured a final boost and help get fall work moving forward.

Manitoba Agriculture released its weekly crop report Monday.

Anne Kirk, a cereal Crop Specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, reports most regions had quit a bit of rain last week.

We didn’t see a lot of harvest progress across the province in the last week because we had a lot of cool and wet weather throughout pretty much the whole province. We had a range of rainfall but it ranged pretty much from about 10 millimeters up to 115 millimeters and that kind of occurred in spurts throughout the week so we didn’t have a lot of harvest progress.

Harvest in general is pretty much complete for spring cereals and canola and it’s ongoing for flax, edible beans, soybeans and silage corn. People that have canola left to harvest, we wouldn’t expect to see any negative quality impacts because of the moisture. The same thing with corn so that’s a positive.

Most areas do not have much cereals left to harvest. We did have some canola left in the fields and, if that canola still had green seed, then that rain would help to turn the seed color.

One benefit of all this rain that we’ve got in the last couple of weeks is that it will aid in fall field work. We were seeing in many areas, it was quite dry, producers were holding off on field work due to soil conditions being very dry and they were worried about having lumpy fields and equipment problems. Once it dries up enough to get back to the fields this rain will help with some fall field work.

~ Anne Kirk, Manitoba Agriculture

Kirk says the harvest had been moving quickly prior to the rain and was running about average. She says how quickly farmers will be able to get back onto the fields and resume harvest will depend on how much more rain we receive and how quickly fields dry out.