By Angela Brown

Harvest progressing in northwest region

Sep 12, 2021 | 4:05 PM

The northwest region and Battlefords area producers continue to make progress with this year’s harvest.

Charlie Smith, who farms in the Rabbit Lake area, northeast of the Battlefords, says his harvest is moving along, after a challenging year with this season’s drought.

“We have all our wheat off and now we’re doing canola,” he told battlefordsNOW this week.

Smith expects it will be another couple of weeks to wait for some later seeded canola before he will be able to go back to finish harvesting that as well.

A total of 56 per cent of the crop is now in the bin for the entire province. For the northwest region, 37 per cent of producers’ crop has now been harvested.

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“It’s well ahead of where they normally are. So it’s very good to see,” Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture Crops Extension Specialist Matthew Struthers told battlefordsNOW.

In the northwest region the crops are usually harvested later than in the southern part of the province.

“The first crop to come off in the northern area is mostly cereals, and a lot of guys will be swathing canola… They’ll be making good progress if the warm and dry weather continues,” Struthers said.

While there has been a fair amount of rain the last couple of weeks, unfortunately it is not enough to compensate for the crops suffering or lost due to the unabated long dry, hot summer in the region and across Saskatchewan.

“[It] no longer can help this year’s crop,” Struthers said. “It’s actually going to put more of a hindrance on harvest.”

The recent rains will result in delays and may also cause issues with downgrading of standing crops, such as cereals and any lentils that might be out in the fields.

But on the positive side, Struthers said the rain will be good for pastures at least.

“The one thing the rain will be doing is helping pastures re-grow and green up going into the fall. [It will] also help recharge the soil going into the winter, and hopefully will be around in the spring so the farmers can use it to seed into,” Struthers said.

He noted many producers in the northwest region and across the province are seeing smaller yields this year due to the drought conditions in the growing season.

“Unfortunately, it was dry all season long,” he said. “That was certainly a big factor in the yield and the quality we are seeing. Another large factor was the heat. The heat that we had in July, that came at a very critical time of growth for plants. It came right around when all crops want to be flowering and get into production mode.”

He said the heat “really beat them down,” and damaged many crops ability to set seed, and develop properly.

“That’s why we’re seeing such a reduced yield, and also such a reduction in quality,” Struthers said.

For Smith, he is experiencing a significant drop in his production as well, similar to many other producers throughout the province.

“The rains were too late,” he said, adding he estimates about at least 70 per cent of a yield decline this year from crop loss on his medium-sized farm from the drought this year.

“I’ve got insurance …,” Smith said. “Hopefully, that will get us through the year.”

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Angela.Brown@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow