The wet and late spring that hit the eastern part of Canada’s Prairies has hurt the progress of the area’s winter wheat crop.
“I have seen very little winter wheat out of the ground. There is nothing I can see around here, or in the more southern parts of the province,” said Jake Davidson, executive manager with Winter Cereals Canada at Minnedosa, Man.
Some producers are still contemplating eliminating the crop they’ve sown, he added.
“Some people that I have talked to are still wondering if they should go with it (leave it in the ground), or plow it under,” Davidson said. “What scares me is that there is a lot of crop under water in the Red River Valley.”
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If farmers decided to leave the crop in the ground, he said, its maturing process would be set back, and yields could ultimately be affected.
There were also far fewer acres seeded to winter wheat than expected, he said.
In August 2010, Davidson felt there would be upwards of 800,000 acres planted to winter wheat across Western Canada, but with the crops coming off late in the autumn of 2010, and an early snowfall in many areas, acreage is below that number, he said.
Early snowfall only made wet fields even wetter, he said.
Statistics Canada said in its latest acreage report that there were 600,000 acres of winter wheat seeded in Western Canada in fall of 2010.
Of those acres, 195,000 were planted in Manitoba, 230,000 in Saskatchewan, and 175,000 in Alberta.
