Having optimal weather conditions in the last weeks of summer and first week of autumn has led to high yields for some of the first crops harvested in Red Deer and Mountain View counties this season.
Art Preachuk, agricultural services manager for Red Deer County, said the quality and quantity of crops coming off the fields in the county have been exceptional thanks to a lack of hail, minimal rain and no frost in the past month.
“We've had excellent, excellent conditions through the end of August until now, very little rain and moisture to hold things back so crops are coming off in good condition and it looks like we've got some record yields in some areas,” he said.
The first crops harvested in the region are cereals, barley and wheat followed by oilseeds, Preachuk added, with wheat coming off in reportedly bumper numbers.
“I've heard up to 90-bushels wheat (per acre). If you can pull that kind of yields off on wheat, it's got to be pretty good.”
Although farmers had to contend with a late spring, hot and dry conditions in late summer sped up the “maturity” of many crops, he said.
Farmers are now starting the canola harvest and Preachuk said he expected high yields from that crop as well as long as the weather cooperates.
Last year, he said, a mid-September windstorm damaged some crops in the county so it's too soon to predict the outcome of the canola harvest.
To the southwest, Mountain View County staff are also receiving reports of “average to above average yields” thanks to “favourable growing conditions.”
“Peas, wheat and barley being in the higher percentages of completion,” said Jane Fulton, the county's agricultural services manager.
Overall, she added, yields in the county during this year's harvest, which typically begins in mid-September and runs into October, have been “comparable to previous years.”
While some farmers may experience yields at or below expectations due to crop losses from the wet spring in central and southern Alberta, the crops that made it to harvest time are healthy in terms of numbers and condition, Fulton said.
According to the most recent provincial crop conditions report released on Sept. 10, the progress of the harvest for spring wheat in Alberta's central region, which includes the two counties, was 18.3 per cent.
The durum harvest was 30 per cent completed, oats was at 2.8 per cent, barley was at 17 per cent, canola was at 16.3 per cent and dry peas was at 79.4 per cent.
The majority of the soil in the region, or 93 per cent, had moisture conditions ranking in the “fair” or “excellent” range as of Sept. 10, according to the report.
