For the week of July 15 – 22nd
It was a very hot week – it seems as if we were saving all the heat from May and June and getting it all now! We had daily highs once again in the upper 20’s and lower 30’s – overnight lows were down below 20C which still is helping the plants to recover – but you can definitely see the crop prospects starting to decline. Nothing major yet – you can start to see some stunted plants in some lighter land where they didn’t get as much rain recently. The most noticeable is in canola where the flowers are dropping early – in good years the canola crop will flower for 4+ weeks – it keeps producing new flowers as old ones drop and produce a pod. The sign of a good canola crop is a longer flowering period as that means it is actively growing and trying to produce more and more pods. Every day we get above 28C the flower drops but the pod aborts and doesn’t produce – and they show up as blanks on the stem where a pod should have formed. The other sign is a shorter depth of podding – meaning the plant stopped growing and instead of 3 feet of podding on the plant, you end up with half that.
The crop prospects are still looking positive – this next two weeks will have a tremendous impact on final production. Forecast of continued hot weather with no rain – if that verifies – could really impact final yields. One offsetting postive note – we have had cover from smoke coming from the north (forest fires) and that is somewhat insulating us from the more extreme heat that had been forecast. Highs in lower 30’s, while hot, are not as significant as the mid to high 30’s that they had originally forecast.
These next couple weeks are a slower time for us. A lot of our staff have taken holidays between this week and next week, or both. We are busy hauling grain to fill summer contracts, and those that are still working are starting to get some of the harvest equipment serviced and hooking tractors to grain carts, etc.
We also had the pleasure of hosting a couple of tour groups. The first group we hosted was a group of around 20 farmers from Kazakhstan who were in Saskatchewan to visit a trade show (Ag in Motion) and wanted to tour a farm while they were here. It was interesting to see both our similarities and differences. Some challenges are common no matter where you are located. The other tour group we hosted was a private insurance company who is developing an insurance product and looking for ways to find unique ways to measure a farm and develop a risk based assessment process to capture management. Looking forward to see how this evolves!
