Farmscape for August 11, 2011   (Episode 3642)

The Canadian Wheat Board reports in areas where farmers were able to get their crops planted this year yield potentials are looking quite good.

The 2011 growing season has been characterized by a late spring followed by excessive moisture and flooding which delayed planting and resulted in an estimated six and a half million acres of cropland being left unseeded.

Bruce Burnett, the director of weather and market analysis with the Canadian Wheat Board observes in areas that were dry enough to get most of the planting completed crops have done well.

Clip-Bruce Burnett-Canadian Wheat Board:
In those areas and that would include most of Alberta, Saskatchewan in the non-flooded regions and parts of Manitoba those crops have faired reasonably well.

They've used the heat that we've received this summer to help catch up from a late planting and yield potentials look to be average to above average across most of those growing areas.

A good portion of the central and northern grain belt is having, at this point in time at least anyway, excellent yield potential with not that much concern for disease or other pests of the crops that one might have expected.

It's a different story in the flooded region.

Those crops got planted late and, especially in Manitoba where we've seen some very warm temperatures during the month of July and into early August, we've seen some stress to those crops.

Again it seems like the later the planting the poorer the crop is in terms of yield potential.

So, on average in western Canada, we're probably going to be above what we would have normally in terms of yield but certainly it's variable from region to region.

Burnett says, given the late start we had this year, the outlook for crops overall is fairly reasonable.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       * Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council