The recent trend of fairer weather in the province has producers feeling more optimistic about harvest
By Kate Ayers
Staff Writer
Farms.com
After over a month of cool and snowy conditions, the recent warmer weather in Alberta is helping farmers get their crops off the fields and into bins.
The weather improvements are “monumental,” Kevin Bender, chair of the Alberta Wheat Commission, said to Farms.com today.
“It certainly is a big turn around from the last five weeks. A lot of progress has been made in Alberta.”
As of Oct. 16, farmers harvested 49.9 per cent of the major crops, a provincial crop report said on Friday. Major crops include spring wheat, barley, oats, canola and dry peas.
And over 95 per cent of peas are in the bin, except in the Peace Region where producers have harvested only 66.9 per cent of the crop, the report said.
Much of the crop that farmers are harvesting is damp and tough, however, increasing the need for artificial drying.
“We’re not concerned about the moisture of the crop coming in,” Humphrey Banack of the Alberta Federation of Agriculture, said in an Edmonton Journal article yesterday.
“We’ll store and dry it later, if we have to … and a lot of producers are doing the same thing. They’re not sitting back.”
Farmers in counties near and west of Edmonton are dealing with standing water in their fields, the article said. Their harvest of major crops in these areas sits at 31 per cent and 42 per cent of crops is in swath.
The short-term weather predictions are looking promising for continued harvest.
“The forecast looks good this week and that will make a big difference in what is left,” Bender said.
"There is still a fair bit to go but one more week will make a big difference on the crop that is out.”
As they progress with harvest, famers can assess whether they will need to make a crop insurance claim, particularly for canola, the article said. The crop took a hit with the hot and dry summer and then early frost.
Indeed, Alberta’s early frost this fall resulted in a higher green count of canola that is not yet mature, the report said. Some farmers have also reported sprouted cereals because of high moisture and lodging caused by snowfall.
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