By Sarah Wallace

Harvest wrapping up across province

Oct 23, 2014 | 5:28 PM

Harvest around Saskatchewan is wrapping up this week.

According to the Weekly Crop Report from Saskatchewan Agriculture, 95 per cent of the provincial crops have been combined.

Shannon Friesen, cropping management specialist for Saskatchewan Agriculture, said this is on par with the five-year average of 94 per cent.

“Harvest is coming to a close for many producers out there,” said Friesen. 

In the Prince Albert, northeastern region, 99 per cent of the crop is in the bin.

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Along with the northeastern region, the west-central and northwestern regions also have 99 per cent of their crops in the bin.

Friesen said the southwestern region has 97 per cent of their crops combined, the southeastern region is at 93 per cent and the east-central region is at 91 per cent.

The Prince Albert area saw very warm and dry weather over the past few weeks which has allowed producers to play catch up.

“It helped [producers] tremendously. I think we were all wishing that this was a whole month ago but I think we’ll take what we can get,” Friesen said of the nice weather.

“For the most part [producers] were able to get into the fields and wrap up harvest. Now with the extended nice weather, all that fall work can be done as well.”

She said fall work includes things like trying to dry up sloughs, laying down more fertilizer since it’s been warm, spraying weeds, moving cattle and hauling bales.

“Whatever they can get done this fall is what’s going on right now, ” said Friesen. 

The fall has been rough on the harvest which means it will have an impact on the quality of crops in the province.

“This fall has been a very difficult harvest for a lot of producers. We started out with lots of acres coming off doing well and then along came the rain and made a lot of those crops suffer, whether it was sprouting and bleaching in a lot of the pulses or now we have higher levels of fusarium head blight then we normally have,” Friesen explained.

She said the quality issues are mainly related to the weather.

Weekly Crop Report

According to this week’s crop report 98 per cent of mustard, 97 per cent of barley and canola, 96 per cent of durum and oats, 95 per cent of spring wheat. 93 per cent of canaryseed, 83 per cent of chickpeas and flax and 62 per cent of soybeans have been combined.

Yields are reported to be average overall, but there are some reports there are some above-average yields for some areas. 

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