(Resource News International) — Cool temperatures and steady precipitation continue to slow the development of grain and oilseed crops across much of Alberta and in turn, harvest operations, according to a crop specialist with the provincial Ag-Info Centre.
“The only area in which significant harvest progress was being made was in the Peace River district of northern Alberta where conditions have been drier,” said Mark Cutts, a crop specialist with the centre at Stettler.
In the Peace area, good progress has been made in combining wheat and barley, with a good portion of the canola crop swathed as well, he said. The arrival of rain in the region, however, was expected to slow those harvest operations.
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In the remaining regions of the province, some harvest activity was underway, but producers were still waiting for crops to mature further, Cutts said.
“There are still a number of spring wheat, canola and barley fields in the central and southern areas that are green and need to ripen further before the harvest can get underway,” he said.
Of the crops, he said, peas were one of the few in which the harvest, outside of the Peace, was actually moving along.
Some winter wheat was also ready to be harvested, but wet conditions were keeping combines off the fields, he said.
“The weather outlook for much of Alberta calls for rain over the next couple of days, and that is going to slow the development and further delay the harvest of the crops,” Cutts said Wednesday.
A few producers in Alberta have been straight-combining green crops for feed use, he noted.
As yields go, Cutts said there were some pretty good-looking crops with strong potential in select areas of Alberta.
However, in the Peace district, the yields of the crops harvested have been disappointing and well below average.
There have been few disease and insect problems to date in the province, Cutts said.
