University News for July 19, 2012
The executive manager of Winter Cereals Canada reports western Canadian farmers have started harvesting one of the largest best quality winter cereal crops ever.
As a result of difficult spring seeding conditions in 2011, winter wheat growers in Manitoba and Saskatchewan tripled the number of acres seeded to winter wheat last fall.
Winter cereals Canada Executive Manager Jake Davidson recalls the biggest hurdle for winter cereal growers last fall was the limited availability of seed.
Clip-Jake Davidson-Winter Cereals Canada:
Generally speaking we had an excellent fall last year.
We had tremendous seedings, up in the 580,000-acre bracket, up from below 200,000 because of the beautiful fall we had.
The crops came through the mild winter in excellent shape and so far we've had low fusarium problems and the crops look really good.
I do hear some rumors through Manitoba that there are yields, crops taken off with good yields in the 80 to 90 bushel bracket.
Where I live I haven't seen any yet but it does make sense.
I was in southern Saskatchewan a week ago and I had a farmer there tell me that he was expecting to get between 80 and 90 bushels per acre and he was in the Gainsborough area so everybody is pretty excited.
I've said it before, anybody that didn't seed winter wheat last year is probably quite envious looking out across his neighbor's fields this year because the crop is going to come off early and it's going to leave lots of time to get it into the bin before it's time to worry about the spring seeded crops and of course when you've got a crop in the bin it's a crop you can sell and when you can sell it you get money.
Based on the quality of this year's crop, Davidson is confident there will be plenty of seed available this fall.
He would like to see 800,000 acres seeded to winter cereal crops in Manitoba and 800,000 seeded to winter cereal crops in Saskatchewan this fall.
For UniversityNews.Org, I'm Bruce Cochrane.
*University News is produced by Wonderworks Canada
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