At least two million acres of cropland remained unseeded across Saskatchewan and Manitoba earlier this week because of a glut of moisture that is delaying seeding efforts.
With the seeding season drawing to a close, many of those acres may not get cropped this year, but those monitoring the situation do not yet have a final tally on the unseeded acres.
In Manitoba, it was estimated that at least 500,000 acres were still not planted and the number could be more than double that. There were somewhere between1.5 to two million acres still unseeded in Saskatchewan as of June 13.
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“How much of that will get seeded I don’t know, because I don’t know what the weather is going to do over the next little while,” said Terry Bedard, a Saskatchewan Agriculture agrologist.
In Alberta, there were no reports of acres left unseeded due to excessive rain.
Most of the heavy rainfall there fell west of Highway 2 and hit ranchlands, silage crops, pastures and grasslands, said Doon Pauly, crop specialist with Alberta Agriculture.
“A lot did infiltrate so there was no massive runoff,” he said, noting the rains came relatively slowly over an eight-day period.
Pauly said many areas of Alberta were dry, but seeding was complete when the rains came.
Many farmers will have to replenish nitrogen levels in their fields, some of which experienced erosion, he noted.
In Manitoba, the eastern and Interlake regions were plagued the most by wet weather this spring. There are farmers in those areas who left ruts in their fields last fall trying to get their crops off and who still find the soils too soggy.
“You can’t even go on it with a quad,” said Glen Keilback, describing the fields at his farm near Beausejour, Man.
“It’s just mucky. It won’t carry any weight at all.”
Keilback typically seeds about 1,000 acres. As of June 13, he had only 110 acres planted.
He hopes the remainder of his land will be dry enough to at least get a cereal crop planted for greenfeed.
“We have a bunch of crop left in the field from last year and we can’t even burn the stubble. That’s how wet it is.”
Keilback said the water table in his area has risen since last year and now is lurking at the surface of fields. Ditches are brimming with water.
The scene is not as grim for Gordon Siemens, who farms with his brother near Dufrost, Man. They were able to get most of their crop planted this spring, but still have a section of land defying their efforts to seed.
The quad he carries in the back of his pickup truck is splattered with mud. Siemens jokes that he has to scout his fields in hipwaders.
With the planting battle almost behind him, he is thinking about the scramble many farmers will face to get their herbicides applied before the weeds get ahead of the crops.
“We’ve been seeding for two months and we’ll be spraying for two months,” said Siemens. “What’s harvest going to be like?”
