The largest unharvested crop in years lies under a heavy blanket of snow in many areas of the Prairies.
Farmers in southern areas will have to think back a long way to remember how to thresh a crop under these conditions or even what to expect as the snow melts.
“It will all depend on the type of spring we have,” said Ken Panchuck, a crop specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture.
“If all goes well, the snow will melt quickly at the end of March and a windy, cool, dry April will follow …. Farmers could then harvest crops that are in relatively good condition.”
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Weather conditions will dictate the quality of the overdue harvest. Freeze-thaw cycles will cause exaggerated bran frost damage as the surface of cereals lifts away from the seed.
Oilseeds will fare better, but the tendency of the crop to shell out can cut yields heavily if it is not handled carefully.
Canola crushers will be the first to notice the drop in quality because the seed hides damage. An increase in free fatty acids in the overwintered crop will only be found once the seed is processed into oil.
Flooding on heavier clay soils is predicted in southern Saskatchewan. Rotting and sprouting could be major problems because crops can’t be harvested until ground conditions stabilize.
A few bright spots
But the situation isn’t bad everywhere.
“In Manitoba most of the crops are off so it isn’t an issue except for some pockets in the parkland region,” said Tony Zatylny of the Canola Council of Canada.
Saskatchewan producers have applied for winter extensions on their provincial crop insurance for 360,000 acres of land. Company officials believe more than 500,000 acres of unharvested crop remain in Saskatchewan fields.
While the southern prairies have been chilled by the early snows, the Peace River districts of Alberta and British Columbia are seriously frosted. Fifty to 90 percent of crops, mainly cereals, remain in the fields in the northern region. The situation is worst in the western Peace area.
“Farmers up here have seen this before, but nobody gets used to it,” said John Huffman, a provincial cereal and oilseed specialist in Grand Prairie, Alta.
Zatylny estimated as much as 500,000 acres of western Canadian canola remains in the fields, much of it in the Peace region, a situation that has already put pressure on crushers who expect to run out of supply in late June or early July.
