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Yields suffer in the driest areas of Manitoba

Oct 4, 2023 | 4:40 PM

There is a significant drop in crop production in the drought impacted areas of Manitoba.

The harvest is at 85 per cent with most cereals in the bin as the story of the 2023 crop is starting to emerge.

Manitoba Agriculture crop report editor Dennis Lange said spring wheat yields have ranged anywhere from 30 to 80 bushels an acre.

“In some areas that did receive more moisture, we’re looking at 90 bushels an acre in some of those fields that got those timely rains,” Lange said. “There are also some lows in that mix as well for spring wheat in some of the driest areas as low as 16 bushels an acre. Those areas just did not receive any moisture.

Protein quality of the spring wheat is roughly 13.5 percent and higher.

Turning to oats, yields range from 80 to 130 bushels an acre, according to Lange.

“Again, same type of thing, in the real low areas of moisture we’re sitting at 60 bushels an acre with fields that did not receive any significant moisture at the critical time,” he said.

Lange added barley yields ranged from 70 to 100 bushels which was encouraging.

Grain corn is sitting at about 15 per cent harvested in the central region with early yield reports in some areas being anywhere from 80 to 200 bushels an acre. Again, all moisture-related.

Lange said canola is at 86 per cent harvested provincially. Overall yields range anywhere from 20 to 60 bushels per acre with a lot of the canola coming in the 40 to 50-bushel range.

With 39 per cent of the flax combined, Lange said yields range anywhere from 20 to 25 bushels an acre.

Soybean yields are in the 20-to-30-bushel range on the early harvested fields and 30 to 60 on the fields that were harvested over the last week. Provincially, 69 per cent of soybeans have been harvested.

Lange said there has been no harvesting done on sunflowers just yet but the crop has been desiccated and harvesting should begin in about two weeks.

alice.mcfarlane@pattisonmedia.com

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