Wet woes continue
As grain producers make cropping and marketing decisions for the upcoming growing season, the number one concern continues to be too much moisture. For years, the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture has published a stubble soil moisture map around this time. Not this year. Except for a few localized exceptions, the entire Saskatchewan grain belt has adequate to excessive soil moisture levels. Not much use drawing a colour coded map that would be all blue. In many eastern regions of the province, there was still water flowing at freeze up. Culverts are now frozen solid, which will create additional flooding problems during the spring melt. Unless there’s below average snowfall over the winter followed by a dry spring, there will again be a considerable acreage of Saskatchewan farmland unseeded in 2011. If there’s above average precipitation in the months ahead, big problems are again looming. There’s an expectation that canola acreage will be up dramatically next year. Much of the unseeded land from 2010 will go into canola for 2011, if it can be seeded. At this point, that’s a big if. I’m Kevin Hursh.