Despite the dry summer, crops in Sask. are faring well

Saskatchewan producers are rolling through harvest this year and are quite a bit ahead of schedule.

Brent Flaten, an integrated pest management specialist with the Agriculture Knowledge Centre, joined the CJME Morning Show on Friday to talk about the latest crop report.

He said farmers are ahead of the five-year average for harvest with the crop report showing 45 per cent of the crop in the bin and another 28 per cent swathed or ready to straight cut.

The five year average is 28 per cent combined for this time of year.

“Harvest varies, depending on the area, right from the northeast at 12 per cent to the southwest at 70 per cent. Quite typically the south is further ahead than the northern grain belt,” Flaten said.

He said the southeast is at 60 per cent, west central at 44 per cent, east central at 36 per cent and the north west at 18 per cent.

When it comes to the dry weather and quality of crops, Flaten said it’s extremely variable depending on where rain fell during the summer.

“The quality is very good generally. In the extreme south there was some areas where the grain didn’t fill very well with the lack of rainfall but generally the quality is very good and much, much better than last year when we had all that rain and disease,” Flaten said.

With a lack of rain this year, the moisture from last year actually helped out some crops. Flaten said with a lot of areas not getting rain, crops this year were able to go down into the soil and tap into that stored soil moisture.

“That’s the good side of all the flooding and rainy weather last summer, was that it saved our bacon this year,” Flaten said.