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Crop issues report

Growing season in review - 2011

Bruce Burnett
Canadian Wheat Board

The climate of the Canadian Prairies is one of extremes and the weather conditions during the past two years have only served to verify that fact. For the second consecutive year, a substantial area of the Prairies was left unseeded due to excessive rainfall during May and June. Abandoned acreage in Western Canada, although not as high as last year, will still be the second-largest level since government programs in the early 1970s intentionally idled acreage. Drier conditions in July and August, combined with favourable weather in September, resulted in improved yield and quality for wheat, durum and barley when compared with last year.

Concerns about excess moisture conditions were prevalent in the early spring, as soils were still saturated from the heavy rains that fell in 2010. These fears were compounded by heavier than normal snowfall, in eastern and northern growing areas, during the winter period. Cool weather during April and May delayed the start of planting, with negligible amounts of the crop planted by the beginning of May. Dry weather in central and northern Alberta and northern Saskatchewan allowed farmers to make excellent progress during the remainder of May. Northern regions remained very dry through the first weeks of June, which resulted in some emergence problems in later-planted fields. Southern regions of the Prairies did not fare as well during May, as heavy rains flooded fields and prevented farmers from planting their intended cropped area. Flooding and excessive moisture issues were reported from southern Alberta to Manitoba, with the heaviest flooding occurring in the south-eastern areas of Saskatchewan and south-western areas of Manitoba. Rivers in this region reported floods at levels that occur in only one out of every three hundred years. Temperatures during May were one to three degrees below normal in the southern regions and close to normal in the central and northern regions. Seeding progress inched forward in May, with only 75 per cent of the intended crop area planted by the end of the month. Sporadic progress was made during early June as rains continued to delay seeding and overall progress reached 86 per cent by the middle of the month. Planting of crops other than green feed stopped at that point, leaving an estimated 2.75 million hectares (6.8 million acres) unseeded.

The weather during July and August was almost the reverse of spring conditions, with southern regions turning dry and hot, while moderate to heavy rains covered the northern growing areas. Temperatures were significantly above normal in Manitoba and eastern Saskatchewan with deviations ranging between two and five degrees Celsius for the month. Western areas of the Prairies were cooler than normal, which slowed crop development. These conditions remained largely intact through August. Crops entered the reproductive stage in the middle of July in eastern growing areas, while western regions were delayed. The warm temperatures in the eastern Prairies helped boost crop development and significant harvest progress occurred during the last week of August in Manitoba.

The warm dry conditions continued in September, which allowed harvest to move ahead of normal in all areas of the Prairies. A severe frost was reported in the middle of September in parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, but damage was minimal as most crops were mature. Mostly dry weather during the last half of September allowed the harvest to reach 90 per cent completion by Oct. 1, 2011, which was close to normal. Slow maturing crops in northern Alberta were harvested over the first two weeks of October. Harvest in the other two Prairie provinces was complete by that point.

Crop quality for wheat, durum and barley is good, with the bulk of the wheat and durum crops meeting specifications for the top two grades. Protein for CWRS was 13.1 percent, below the 10 year average of 13.8. The durum protein was also lower than normal, at 12.3 per cent in 2011 compared to 12.7 normally. Total wheat production for Western Canada is currently estimated at 22.7 million tonnes1, while barley output only reached 7.3 million tonnes. Barley production is nearly two million tonnes below the recent average. Spring wheat production is estimated at 17.8 million tonnes, while durum production is estimated at 4.2 million tonnes. Spring wheat yields are forecast to reach 2.9 tonnes per hectare, which is slightly higher than last year. Durum yields are expected to be similar to last year at 2.6 tonnes per hectare. Barley yields are also expected to be similar to last year at 3.3 tonnes per hectare.

1Statistics Canada; December estimate of production of principal field crops, Dec. 6, 2011.

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