YORKTON, Sask. — It wasn’t wanted or needed, but it was appropriate that rain fell during a crop tour of southwestern Manitoba and southeastern Saskatchewan.
A brief storm dumped rain on Reston, Man., near the Saskatchewan border as agricultural journalists and commodity analysts drove past grain and oilseed crops yesterday, the second day of the CWB crop tour of Western Canada.
Crops around Reston had already received more than enough precipitation in late June, when 150 to 200 millimetres of rain fell on southwestern Manitoba and southeastern Saskatchewan in late June.
Read Also
Field-by-field mapping could improve yield, productivity predictions
University of Saskatchewan researchers are using field border mapping to collect data on field variability, including problematic weeds, and to predict things like yields.
The crop damage from excessive moisture was easy to spot, both from the road and in the field, during a meandering and comprehensive trip from Brandon to Yorkton, Sask.
Chris Birk, CWB farm services co-ordinator and tour guide, had read and heard reports of waterlogged crops prior to the drive through the region.
“It was about what I anticipated,” he said. “There was definitely a lot of water damage throughout our trip in (southwestern) Manitoba and (southeastern) Saskatchewan.
A few highlights and lowlights from the tour:
• Near Griswold, Man., on the Trans-Canada Highway west of Brandon, a spring wheat field was inundated with 50 metre wide depressions filled with water and cattails. Much of the crop was less than 50 centimetres high and weeks behind normal development.
• A sunflower crop near Pipestone, Man. was not flowering, and the crop was less than one metre tall.
• A wheat crop near Reston was exceptionally thin and yellow. Birk pulled a couple of plants out of the ground and the roots on the wheat were stunted. He said the roots didn’t develop properly because the crop was waterlogged in late June. When the top layer of soil dried up, the wheat couldn’t root down to access necessary moisture and nutrients.
• Many unseeded fields with no crop were seen between Reston and Redvers, Sask.
• A canola field near Redvers, Sask. was patchy and thin. The crop was either dead or very short in places. Water was still ponding on low spots in the field.
• There were high levels of ergot in a durum field east of Weyburn. The fungus was visible on at least one in 15 durum heads in a patch of the crop near the highway.
• Ditches north of Weyburn, Sask., were finally dry and the status of crops is beginning to improve. There were still drowned out spots but also decent crops in the area, including a lush, nearly mature winter wheat crop.
• Despite the massive amount of rainfall in late June, many soybean crops in southeastern Saskatchewan were thriving. Many soybean fields had robust plant stands and there was little yellowing, stunting or other evidence of water damage.
Birk, who farms near Lockport, Man., was particularly impressed by a soybean field near Manor, Sask.
“Every field we looked at, whether it was canola, flax, wheat or oats, there were all areas where you could see the crop drowned out,” he said during a tour stop south of Qu’Appelle, Sask.
“That soybean field did handle the moisture very well. The only (places) you saw blank spots in the field was where the seeder couldn’t go into the water … but wherever they put seed into the ground the crop was there.”
Throughout the tour there were wheat and canola fields that also looked quite good in southwestern Manitoba and southeastern Saskatchewan, but those fields were the exception rather than the rule.
