Last year’s wheat board visit came on Aug. 6. The year before it was Aug. 15. This year, Kevin Miller’s visitors arrived on his farm just north of Saskatoon on July 29.
“It’s an earlier crop this year,” said David Przednowek, weather and crop analyst with the Canadian Wheat Board.
Miller’s farm is one of 15 permanent test sites on an annual tour conducted by the board’s crop surveillance department. The team counts tillers and kernels in those sites and in another 100 randomly selected fields across the Prairies to come up with yield estimates that will be used internally by the board for crop production forecasts.
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Przednowek and his crew began the week in Calgary and looped through Lethbridge, Medicine Hat and Swift Current. Saskatoon is the first stop on today’s journey that will eventually lead them to Kindersley.
“I perked up coming into Saskatoon,” said Przednowek who saw some dry crops in the Swift Current area where there hasn’t been rain for a few weeks.
“There’s a lot of bleached stuff around Swift Current.”
Things started to look better north of Davidson. The crops on Miller’s farm are some of the best the group had seen in the last three days.
Miller benefited from early seeding and a spattering of rain at the right times. He began seeding his CWRS Teal on May 2 and was done by May 14. He received his first rainfall on June 17 that “ran into the ground like it was going down a gopher hole,” followed by a little over five centimetres that fell on June 19 and 20.
“That was the clincher. That was my salvation,” said Miller.
But the rain was spotty: “I’ve got neighbors to the west of me that are in a severe drought now,” he said.
“He was quite lucky,” agrees Przednowek.
Deep seeding his wheat was also a factor in this near-drought year.
“The proof is in the pudding,” said Przednowek, casting his arm over a field he just surveyed. “Seeding deep really did it on the wheat this year.”
Przednowek figures Miller is looking at 35 to 40 bushels per acre for this year’s crop.
“If I can average that, I’m more than happy,” said Miller.
Last year the surveillance crew predicted a harvest of 26 to 28 bushels and it came in around 30. The year before, they predicted 40 to 44 bushels per acre and it averaged about 40, said Miller.
The general prairie picture is hard to predict.
“It’s a real mixed bag,” said Przednowek, who completes his survey of Alberta and western Saskatchewan this week and moves on to Manitoba and eastern Saskatchewan next week.
Things look real good around Calgary, but the crops are stressed in southern Saskatchewan. The crop is early, prairie-wide, so frost shouldn’t be a factor. Przednowek expects a lot of crops to be rolling away by the middle of August.
The next stop for the wheat board team is Maymont and then it is heading into fields around Biggar, Unity and Wilkie. Przednowek is dreading this leg of the journey. A prolonged stretch of hot, dry weather has left crops in that part of the province in bad shape.
