By Alice McFarlane

Oat harvest begins in east central Saskatchewan

Aug 26, 2020 | 3:11 PM

MELFORT, Sask. – Canada is a major supplier of oat, making up the majority of world oat trade. Oat continues to be a major cereal crop in Saskatchewan with annual production more than 1.5 million tonnes.

Grain Millers Yorkton procurement lead Scott Shiels said about five per cent of the oat crop in his area has been combined. He said farmers have been hauling in oats for about a week primarily from the earliest seeded crop and lighter land that may have missed some of the rains throughout the summer.

He said what has been delivered is light.

“Weights are okay but just okay. That’s something we haven’t been used to in the past few years,” Shiels said. “We’ve had very heavy oat crops. What we’re seeing right now is making specs for the most part but we’re not seeing 45-pound oats on a regular basis like we’ve had other years at harvest time.”

Shiels said he expects the heavier oats to show up in the later seeded crops in areas that received timely rain.

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He said there are some crops that could use the moisture.

“There are some later crops that could benefit from some of these showers that have been coming through the area lately,” Shiels said. “Although the five inches that fell near Grenfell on Friday was not good.”

Shiels said a few tenths of rain would help to cure the last little bit of wheat and barley and help some of that canola that is just starting to turn.

“We’ve seen early oats coming off that are testing dry enough that the showers won’t set farmers back and they haven’t been big enough to do any damage. There’s always the risk of crop laying in a swath getting too much rain on it and getting mildew, that sort of thing. But we’re really too early for that.”

The four main uses for oat are general livestock feed, human consumption, recreation horse feed and forage. The human food market is growing as consumers recognize the dietary benefits of whole grains.

The surge of interest in home baking products created by the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed down but Shiels said there could be more long- term positive effects.

“The pandemic really did drive agriculture and food product demand upwards. It didn’t make people buy more it made them buy faster,” he said. “What we did notice was a lot of our food customer companies were asking for their orders to be shipped earlier and then putting more orders later.”

Shiels does not see that level of demand continuing but even a small uptick would be good.

“I’ve told a lot of our farmer customers if we can sustain even a small percentage of that big boom in demand long term that’s a win for us. A win for us is a win for oat growers.”

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alice.mcfarlane@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @AliceMcF