(Alice McFarlane/farmnewsNOW Staff)

By Alice McFarlane

Year in Review

Year in Review: Harvest from Hell

Dec 23, 2019 | 12:00 PM

“It was the fall we didn’t have.”

Saskatchewan Agriculture Minister David Marit said the entire growing season was a challenge with most areas starting out very dry. The livestock sector was concerned about the condition of pasture and availability of feed. When the rains came there was variable crop germination.

The harvest season was plagued with numerous delays due to rain and snow. It’s estimated two million acres of crop are still in the field.

“There’s pulse crops out there. How do you salvage that? There’s cereal crops, canola crops. How will that winter? We’ll just have to wait and see but a lot of it won’t have any value,” Marit said. “It’s a year like we’ve never experienced before. I haven’t in my 40 plus years of farming and it’s not over.”

Even with the difficulties, Marit said the crop itself was huge.

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“It was probably our second highest production year. We’ll be over 37 million metric tonnes. But we’re still concerned about the quality side and there are still quite a few acres out there,” he said.

In the final crop report of the season, Crops Extension Specialist Cory Jacob said some farmers were still hoping to get a little more crop off.

“The reality is there will be some crop leftover and harvested in the spring. It’s looks like we won’t be able to get everything off.”

Northeast region was one area that did surprisingly well. Even with most of the crop in the bin the grain dryers will be busy all winter.

Jacob said not only was the northeast at 98 per cent combined, it also reported the highest yields in the province which is unusual.

“In the northeast, not only were yields average to above average, they are leading the province in harvest progress. That’s not normal,” he said. “They are typically behind the southern and central regions. The northeast had very good yields is what we were hearing from producers.”

Marit said farmers are well into preparations for the 2020 growing season but there is still a lot of work to do to wrap up the 2019 harvest.

“It’ll be a year a lot of us will want to forget,” Marit said.

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alice.mcfarlane@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @AliceMcF