By Bruce Cochrane
Saskatchewan Agriculture reports the 2015 harvest is running well ahead of average.
In its weekly crop update, for August 11 to 17, Saskatchewan Agriculture reports 9 percent of the crop has been combined and 10 percent is swathed or ready to straight cut, well above the five year average of 2 percent.
Shannon Friesen, a cropping management specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, says we haven't seen this much progress since 2006-2007.
Shannon Friesen-Saskatchewan Agriculture:
On the cereal side, in addition to most crops at this time, yields have been significantly down to where they have been the last two years.
Of course 2013 we saw our highest yielding year on record and last year was the second.
Overall things are down at the moment but of course harvest is just beginning.
Not a lot of our spring wheat or our durum has come off yet.
In terms of quality, we have heard early reports that there has been some sprouting, certainly there's a little bit of wheat midge damage, fusarium head blight damage, all of the normal things that we tend we see this year.
With the additional rainfall we have received in the last couple of weeks, which is a little too late in terms of helping with yields and a little too early maybe for some of that fall work, but certainly quality is not as good as we would have hoped.
If yields are down, tonnage will be down and supply may be down as well but it's still pretty early to try and get some full numbers around that until we fully know what's coming off and how good quality that is.
But certainly compared to last year at this time, where the majority of our wheat and durum crops were heavily infected with fusarium, supply may have been a little tighter for good quality seed out there.
So, at the moment, we're still doing OK but of course time will tell.
Friesen says for the most part harvest weather has been almost ideal and hopefully the rain will stay away and a lot more acres can come off.
Source: Farmscape