Winter wheat seeding down

With the snow fallen and winter wheat planted, officials at the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) have released statistics on this season's seeding, and the numbers are down across the country.

Bruce Burnett, weather and crop specialist at the CWB, said the numbers are down for a few reasons – and that they are down more than expected.

Overall, Western Canada is down about 41 per cent year over year, with 665,000 total acres being seeded. This is due to both Manitoba and Saskatchewan seeding much less than last year, with 46 per cent and 48 per cent less respectively.

“Fortunately for Alberta, it's a more stable situation this year,” said Burnett, noting Alberta has seeded 170,000 acres versus 195,000 last year, a drop of about 13 per cent.

“And so basically the cooler wet fall delayed things, but didn't delay it enough that farmers didn't get their winter wheat planted in Alberta.”

But the harvests in Saskatchewan and Manitoba were delayed quite a bit, meaning producers weren't able to get the winter wheat in the ground on time.

“And with southern Alberta having a longer growing season and a little bit more time to get that crop established as well, that sort of helps out too.”

Another factor that affected producers' choices not to seed in other provinces is that both the yields and quality were poor last year, he said, noting that Saskatchewan seeds the most winter wheat.

Saskatchewan grows the most winter wheat of the provinces and it dropped 48 per cent this year, because of the delayed harvest but also the poor yields and quality of the winter wheat harvest.

“So Alberta sort of sticks out there because it's only down 13 per cent, but I think it's a bit of a different climate. The growing conditions last year for winter wheat in southern Alberta were reasonably good, and overall there was a big difference between that and some of the crops grown in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.”

There are some pros and cons when comparing winter wheat and regular wheat, with the one advantage being that planting winter wheat allows producers to split up both their seeding and harvest.

“People like winter wheat because of the fact it does spread out your workload. It doesn't need to be planted in the spring and it is harvested earlier.

“It's helpful especially if as a farmer you're pressed for time at planting to get all of your crop in; the second thing is yields traditionally have been higher,” he said.

One of the downsides is the wheat needs enough time to germinate and sprout in the fall, as it needs to be established enough to go into hibernation over winter and not die.

The plants go into a kind of hibernation and don't come out until a sustained warm spell with above zero temperatures at night – meaning chinooks shouldn't bring them out of hibernation,” he said.

“It really takes a week to 10 days of warm temperatures where it doesn't even get to freezing at night for it to come out of dormancy.”

One critical aspect is that there needs to be enough snow cover to keep the plant in hibernation, while also protecting it from the cold winter wind.

“Even an inch or two of snow cover goes a long way to protecting the plant. When it gets cold for significant periods of time without protective snow cover it would die.”

One variable is if there are warmer temperatures in the spring and the crop emerges from hibernation, followed by another cold snap, spring freeze injury can occur and can damage a crop.

“I think one of the key things is if the crop is well established and as long as there's enough stubble – to trap the snow so the crop isn't bare for extended periods of time when it's cold – usually those crops survive very well.”