Limited options to improve yields | Losses depend on whether the plants were in the milk, boot or dough stage
The dog days of summer have arrived on the Prairies.
That means one of two things for many Saskatchewan producers: either a visit to the lake or a trip to the field to assess hail damage.
Jeff Morrow, vice-president of operations at Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Corp., said hail claims have been arriving at corporation headquarters for the past few weeks.
Hail has been reported at various locations throughout the province.
The latest event was a storm July 17 that hammered a swath of farmland nearly 20 kilometres wide stretching from south of Wilkie toward Rosetown in west-central Saskatchewan.
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The storm caused widespread damage to crops and farm buildings.
Affected producer were still assessing their losses last week, but many crops are a writeoff.
“I think the offices are getting calls in those areas for sure … but I don’t have any way to quantify how many or how widespread the damage was,” Morrow said.
Hail losses have also been reported at various locations in Alberta and Manitoba this summer.
When fields aren’t a complete loss, the next question is what to do with the crops that remain.
Assessing hail losses can be difficult, according to crop specialists and agronomists who spoke at a recent Crop Diagnostics School at Scott, Sask.
In cereals, hail damage varies de-pending on the growth stage.
A 1975 study conducted in North Dakota concluded that the greatest hail-related yield losses resulted when stems were broken off during the milk stage.
The study found that yield losses in spring wheat can be 30 to 70 percent when 100 percent of stems are bent.
By comparison, yield losses in the boot stage were 28 to 39 percent, according to the study.
Total yield losses during the hard dough stage were three to 47 percent.
Peas are among most resilient crops.
Plants in mid- to late-flower can produce new pods after a devastating hail, although yields will be significantly reduced and maturity delayed.
Fred Waelchli, an agrologist with Saskatchewan crop insurance, said some pea crops that were hammered by hail in early to mid-July have since recovered and are supporting a handful of pods per plant.
“There was basically no green on them anymore…. They pretty much all looked white,” Waelchli told agronomists attending the Crop Diagnostics School.
Peas, more than many other crops, have the ability to recover because root systems with intact nodules can kick start regrowth.
Even pea plants whose main stems have been severely damaged or broken off entirely can produce a crop. However, harvesting will likely be difficult because surviving plants and pods are generally laid flat and difficult to pick up.
“There is some regrowth but it’s minimal,” Waelchli said. “It would be awfully delayed, and it would be a very mixed bag in maturing. The weeds are going to make a comeback as well, and then you’re going to have to do something about that.”
Losses to canola also vary, depending on staging.
Clint Jurke, an agronomist with the Canola Council of Canada, said farmers hoping to optimize canola yields following hail have limited options at their disposal.
“One of the questions that we often get asked at the council … is what can I apply to my recently hailed (canola) crop in order to help it bounce back and improve?” Jurke said.
“There’s actually not a lot you can do that’s going to help.”
Jurke said some producers have asked about applying Headline after hail in flowering or podding canola in hopes of reducing blackleg infection and preserving or improving the remaining yield potential.
“I’ve never seen any data that would show that you’re going to see an improvement,” Jurke said.
“The blackleg infection that’s going to happen at that point is not going to be significant. To affect yield, you need to have those plants infected (by blackleg) at the one to two-leaf stage before you get those yield-robbing cankers forming.”
In other words, spraying Headline on flowering or podding canola after a hailstorm will increase production costs with little or no hope of a yield boost. The same goes for micro-nutrient packages.
“I have never seen any third party data that shows a good yield bump,” Jurke said. Some evidence suggests that a foliar application of nitrogen, if applied at the proper stage, can improve canola yields after hail.
Liquid nitrogen, when dribble banded before flowering, showed a positive yield response on a hail-damaged canola field near Medicine Hat, Alta., last year.
However, timing is key.
Foliar nitrogen applied after flowering is more likely to delay maturity and have no impact on yield.
“If you’re trying to (boost) yields mid-flower into podding with nitrogen, forget it,” Jurke said.
“You’re just going to delay your maturity. It needs to be (applied on) that early season stuff.”
Morrow said Saskatchewan crop insurance has received 675 pre-harvest claims this year. They are for losses on seeded farmland that will not produce a crop this year and has been taken out of production.
Most of the pre-harvest claims are flood-related from east-central and southeastern Saskatchewan.
Saskatchewan Agriculture suggested July 10 that two to three million acres were flooded. However, it does not account for unseeded acres that were too wet to plant.
