It’s a great year for winter cereals, not such a great year for canola, flax and canaryseed. The crop condition ratings in this week’s crop report from the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture show that winter wheat and fall rye and looking great. Winter wheat is rated as 33 per cent excellent and 50 per cent good. Only 3 per cent is poor. By contrast, 23 per cent of the canola in the province is rated as fair, 13 per cent is rated as poor and 3 per cent is very poor. Canola is the crop with the lowest ratings, but it’s followed closely by flax, canaryseed and barley. The crop report also provides ratings for each region of the province. The northwestern region of the grain belt has the best crops overall. Canola is particularly strong in the northwest. The poorest crop ratings are in the northeastern grain belt. In that region, only one per cent of the canola is rated as excellent, 31 per cent is good, 33 per cent is fair, 29 per cent is poor and six per cent is rated as very poor. The best lentil crops are in West Central Saskatchewan, where 30 per cent of the crop is rated as excellent and 54 per cent is rated as good. Unfortunately, even most of the crops that are looking good are still one to two weeks behind normal in development. I’m Kevin Hursh.
Most years, there’s a wide variation in Saskatchewan fields. Seldom is it as extreme as this year. In many cases, the millions of acres of unseeded and flooded land is a mess. It was too wet for good weed control early in the season. It’s common to see waste-high weeds that are drying down from a herbicide application with the telltale ruts from the sprayer tires filled with water. In some cases, as the land dries, producers are resorting to tillage to break down the weed residue and fill in the ruts. While some of the crops in the wet zones are stunted and spindly, there are also some good crops, although many of them are two or three weeks late. On the western side of the province where the flooding wasn’t as serious, there are some absolutely excellent crops. If hail and frost stay away, there will be producers who harvest their biggest crop ever. Contrast that with producers who didn’t get a single acre seeded and you get an idea of the tremendous range in fortunes across the province. I’m Kevin Hursh.
A couple weeks ago, there was hope for a quick resolution to Mexican import restrictions on Canadian canaryseed. Unfortunately, there has been limited progress in resolving the problem. Canaryseed exporters in this province say that about half of the canaryseed railcars stopped at the Mexican border have been allowed to enter, but the status of the product now in Mexico remains unclear. A couple weeks ago, there seemed to be a willingness at the ministerial level in Mexico to forge a new agreement on weed seed levels in Canadian canaryseed, particularly in regard to wild buckwheat. That willingness has not been apparent within the Mexican bureaucracy. Exporters close to the situation say there have been communication breakdowns between Mexican and Canadian officials and there’s no estimating when exports will resume. In the meantime, canaryseed is only sporadically being purchased from farmers and prices are soft. Mexico is usually the top customer for our canaryseed and it won’t be a normal market until they’re back in. I’m Kevin Hursh.
It’s been a very different growing season and with that has come a very different in-crop weed profile. Most of my travels are in West Central and Southwest Saskatchewan, and in those regions it’s been a great year for wild mustard. It’s a weed that’s easily controlled in cereal crops and within canola, but it’s a different story within lentil crops. There’s a smattering of wild mustard in nearly all the regular lentil crops and some crops are absolutely polluted. You have to look closely to be sure it’s actually a lentil crop. In Clearfield lentils, much better wild mustard control is possible and those crops are typically much cleaner. It’s also been a great year for Canada thistle. While it’s common to see Canada thistle patches, this year you see more fields where the perennial has taken over large sections. One weed that hasn’t thrived is kochia. Usually by this point in the season big kochia Christmas trees are taking over in some pulse crops. This year, it’s rare to see a crop with a significant kochia problem. Even roadsides have fewer kochia than usual. Wild mustard seeds remain viable a long time and some fields are going to see a lot of seed go back into the ground. Kochia seeds remain viable for only a few years so that weed seed bank should be decreased after this year. I’m Kevin Hursh.
The state of New York is implementing regulations that could cripple traffic through the St. Lawrence Seaway. The regulations pertain to ballast water used by ships to balance their loads. The discharge of ballast water is blamed for the introduction of many invasive species into the Great Lakes. The New York regulations require ships to clean their ballast water to very high standards. Observers say no ship in the world could meet the quality standards that will be applied. Amazingly, the regulations do not regulate the discharge of ballast water, but rather the transit of ships containing ballast water. Observers say ballast water is not typically released from a vessel during transport. The regulatory changes are slated for January 2012. Hopefully, rational thought will prevail well before that time. Many groups are calling for a national uniform standard rather than letting individual states set their own rules. According to the Western Grain Elevator Association, Canada exports approximately seven million tonnes of grain annually through the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway, so the grain industry has a big stake in seeing more reasonable regulations. I’m Kevin Hursh.