Farmscape for August 10, 2018

Saskatchewan Agriculture reports this year's harvest is just nicely getting underway.
Saskatchewan Agriculture released its weekly Crop Report for the period from July 31 to August 6 yesterday.
Allie Noble, a Crop Extension Specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, says farmers have started to get into the fields and we're starting to see the beginnings of harvest so currently in the province one percent of the crop has been combined and two percent has been swathed or is ready to straight cut, right on par with the five year average.

Clip-Allie Noble-Saskatchewan Agriculture:
So far the south is the furthest advanced with harvest and they're sitting at three percent.
This is the southeast and south west regions.
This is very typical for Saskatchewan.
So far they've been pulling off average to below average yields and a lot of that has to do with the specific field conditions and moisture conditions as throughout Saskatchewan this year we've had very spotty and scattered showers and storms and that's where we've been getting most of our precipitation so it's just whether or not producers got that as to how yields are sitting.
The yields are below average in some areas but for the most part they are right around average and this is to be expected just because of the lack of moisture that we've had.
We have seen some heat damage from crops.
This week the most crop damage we saw was due to lack of moisture, strong winds and the hot temperatures and this really causes heat blasting and it can reduce your yield potential in crops.
Also along with that it's causing crops to rapidly mature so we should see a lot more producers in the fields in the coming weeks.

With the heat wave that's coming this next week, Noble encourages farmers to take precautions because we don't want any field fires occurring.
She says, when combines are going, it can increase the risk of fire so she recommends keeping a fire extinguisher in the cab and keeping an extra eye out for potential issues.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork