After a month-plus of waiting for harvest weather to improve, cold, wet conditions lifted to allow Prairie farmers to return to their fields.
Prior to harvest’s re-start, Alberta Pulse Growers, Alberta Canola and Alberta Wheat and Barley Commissions said over $3 billion in crops remained in their province’s fields.
Conditions were even worse than in 2016 when inclement weather left about a million acres of unharvested crops to overwinter, according to Alberta Pulse Growers chairman D’Arcy Hilgartner.
Southern Alberta farmer Lynn Jacobson says his harvest season was shut down until last week.
Much of the crops remaining in the province were high moisture, which is adding to growers’ production costs as they attempt to dry their product to retain quality.
“Some people will have enough to blend," Jacobson says. "It all depends on how willing the elevator company or your buyer is too. There’s a lot of grain out there that’s poor quality.”
Saskatchewan
Norm Hall hopes to complete harvest operations on his east-central Saskatchewan farm by the end of this week.
By Sept. 9, he was about two-thirds completed and felt optimistic about his crops and being finished soon.
“Everything was either No. 1 or No. 2 [quality] with good yields. We were happy with things to that point,” Hall says, adding he was lucky to finish his wheat harvest before the weather turned.
“There’s lots of drying going on, including in ours” since operations began anew, Hall says.
Manitoba
Southwest Manitoba’s Bill Campbell was 70 to 75 per cent done around Sept. 8, despite a June hailstorm that forced him to re-seed. His re-seeded crops were nearly ready to be harvested when the weather changed for the worse, Campbell says.
“Our season wasn’t too bad on the crops that weren’t affected by the hail; some of the wheat came back decent enough,” he says, noting spring seeded canola came off before the long harvest delays.
Wet crops
Like Alberta and Saskatchewan, most Manitoba crops being taken off now are wet.
Some of the crops re-seeded in Campbell’s area were planted for greenfeed due to grass and forage shortages in the province, but he questions their condition when they’re baled.
“It’s a concern for those guys who have relied on that for an alternative feed source,” Campbell says.
Some might not be worth baling, although recently improved weather could allow farmers to salvage something.
Although crops are also heading for livestock feed, feed corn from the United States will price-compete, pushing values down, Campbell explains.
Farm Credit Canada is offering support to customers in parts of the Prairies facing financial hardship as a result of widespread excessive moisture that has delayed harvest and reduced the quality of this year’s crop.
Source : fcc