Farmers will be hoping for warm, dry weather in order to get a diminished crop off the field in light of an early snow that damaged yields of crops this year.
Despite a wet spring this year that put crops back somewhat, the crop was shaping up to be an average one, according to agriculture officials. With the snow knocking it down and putting a lot of moisture in the crop at the wrong time of year, what was an average crop is now more than likely going to be less than average, said Art Preachuk, manager of agricultural services for Red Deer County.
“It's always a scary thing for crops to come down this early and on top of standing crops, never mind the ones that are in swaths. A week or more ago, it looked pretty ugly…because you don't know if it's going to melt off, how long it's going to stay under that snow and how quick it's going to dry up. I guess for as bad as it was, we've got ideal conditions now to allow the guys in there to get things swathed. We need this hot and dry and windy weather to help things continue to dry and get it in the bin,” he said.
Preachuk said because of the moisture content in the crop, it will lose quality and could be downgraded from a quality crop to a feed crop. The fact that the crop damage wasn't limited to a small area will mean that more feed-quality grain and barley will flood the market, depressing the price for what is already a lower-quality product. Constant wetting and drying of the crop at this time of year also diminishes quality.
“You want heavy barley. The more pounds you put in a bushel, the better. You're losing quality, you're losing weight; that's volume, that's dollars,” he said.
One of the upsides to a potentially poorer quality crop is that livestock producers will be able to take advantage of lower-priced feed grains. For the producer, however, the situation isn't so good.
“It's unfortunate that it has to be at somebody else's expense,” Preachuk said.
As for prices that producers might be able to get for the crop they have, Preachuk said that will be determined largely by what type of crop eventually gets put in the bin. If it's a better quality, a farmer will get more for the crop.
“If 75 per cent of the grain on the Prairies is feed grain and it doesn't make number 1, then you know you're not going to get a lot for feed,” he said.
