Farmscape for September 4, 2017

Saskatchewan Agriculture reports the dry soil moisture conditions that have reduced crop yields in much of the south are now expanding north.
Saskatchewan Agriculture released its crop report for the period from August 22 to 28 on Thursday.
Brent Flaten, an Integrated Pest Management Specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, says the dry weather has resulted in much better crop quality than last year and yields are generally better than expected but number of acres rated as dry has increased.

Clip-Brent Flaten-Saskatchewan Agriculture:
The soil moisture is depleted.
Even in the north it's getting a bit dry.
What we've seen is the general pattern over the summer where it was very spotty rainfall and generally dry conditions, south of number 16 highway, south of number one highway being the worst, that's started to move up.
We see some dry topsoil conditions for annual crops and hay and pasture land north of highway 16 as well.
In general for annual cropland actually 73 percent of the grainbelt is either short or very short and 79 percent of the pasture hay land is short or very short so the dry soil conditions due to the dry weather has moved north.
The general feeling is that we could do without rain for awhile yet to get more harvest in and then hopefully some real good soaker rains in the fall to replenish that soil moisture.
We're probably going to need some timely rains next year too and also snow for the cattle guys in order to replenish dugout water as well.

Flaten says generally harvest is moving along quite well and harvest conditions this year have been a lot better than last year.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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