Alberta’s advantage wasn’t playing out last week as it was bypassed in harvest progress by the other two prairie provinces and northeastern British Columbia.
“We’ve got lots of crop to choose from. Wet canola, damp wheat, soggy barley. It’s all here,” said Harry Brook, Alberta Agriculture crop specialist in Stettler, Alta.
“On the up side there is great supply of feed grain for the coming year.”
Agronomists in most areas of Manitoba, north of the Trans-Canada Highway in Saskatchewan and north of Calgary in Alberta are watching as producers continue harvest despite tough conditions.
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Wet grain is piling up in farmyards and in grain bins and average daytime humidity levels have been too high to offer much drying. The result could be dangerously heated grain and insect infestations.
Agronomists recommend that producers monitor their bins and be prepared to shift grain as necessary.
“Producers no longer have many choices. It’s usually better to have the grain off at this time of the year, no matter how wet it is. The exception might be some oilseeds, but generally you don’t want to wait for snow to put an end to harvest,” said Brook.
In Alberta, late-seeded crops east of Highway 2 and north of Highway 9 are showing large amounts of chlorophyll. The green in cereals and canola has kept producers from harvesting more than 50 percent of the fields in pockets in this area.
Brook said the size of the crop is slowing curing and drying.
“Sixty bushel canola and 100 barley are great yields. But when you start paying 30 cents a bu. to dry the barley, the little margin you might have had on volume drops into the red pretty fast,” he said.
In the north Peace River region, harvest sped to near completion with some late-seeded feed barley yet to be removed from the fields and five percent of the canola still in swaths.
Malting barley has performed better than average in this area.
Phil Thomas of Agritrend Agrology said canola is yielding 40-60 bu. per acre and is mostly No. 1. Peas ranged from 40-60 bu. and flax 30-35.
“The high yields have created storage problems,” he said.
In the south Peace, harvesting continues with some areas making good headway. About 65-75 percent of all crops have been combined, he said.
In southern Alberta, sugar beet harvest is under way and potatoes and grain corn harvests are all but done.
An improved weather picture for this week should help growers, say agronomists.
Terry Bedard of Saskatchewan Agriculture said most of Saskatchewan has completed harvest.
“Waterfowl and weathering are the two biggest problems for growers here,” said Bedard.
Damp grain remains a problem in Saskatchewan and the northwestern region still has about 20 percent of the crop to be harvested.
In Manitoba’s Red River and central southern growing areas, corn and sunflower harvests are nearing completion. Some sunflowers remain out, but freezing temperatures are rapidly advancing maturity. The sunflower yields ranged from 800 pounds per acre in the east to nearly 2,000 in west-central Manitoba.
Soybean and potato harvests are nearly complete in most areas.
In southwestern Manitoba, harvest is complete in most areas with fall work under way.
Dry conditions in some areas south of Virden and Brandon have put fall-seeded crops slightly behind average.
Higher than average moisture conditions across the West have kept many producers from applying anhydrous ammonia or other nitrogen. Agronomists say some producers may have to make equipment changes in the spring to accommodate single pass applications of seed and fertilizer as a result of not being able to apply nutrients this fall.
