Manitoba Agriculture reports rain and snow over the past week continued to slow harvest progress.
Manitoba Agriculture released its weekly crop report yesterday.
Anastasia Kubinec, the Manager of Crop Industry Development, says limited harvest progress was reported last week before the rain and snow started Wednesday.
Clip-Anastasia Kubinec-Manitoba Agriculture:
Right now quality of grain that's out there, so any wheat, barley or oats is reducing.
It's not the bright color, there could be some falling number issues as well as some sprouting issues.
For other crops that are out there such as canola, the quality has remained good.
There is no sprouting that has been heard of.
The seed coat color is more of a grayish now than the nice matte black.
That's not really a quality reducing factor.
The inside of the canola seed is still well intact.
For sunflowers, soybeans, grain corn, dry beans so far quality has been maintained in those crops and we will be watching what does occur, especially in things dry beans which have been sitting out in the field a little bit longer than producers would want them to be.
Right now what we really need to see is a stretch of sunny and windy days, low humidity and OK temperatures.
Right now we're not really thinking we're going to get back up into the 20s but, if we could have above 10, low teens with sun and wind and low humidity that would really progress harvest along.
It would allow for stock material to dry out so that threshing could occur and there's no issues with actually getting that material through the combine.
It would hopefully dry down some of the seeds in the pods or the heads that are still remaining out there so that there would be less aeration and drying that would need to occur even though we do suspect that we'll still have to have some amount of artificial drying to make sure that crop is in good condition.
Kubinec says, based on the forecast, it looks like next week may be better weather but producers may actually be able to get out there and combine this week.
Source : farmscape