Harvest generally going well

With harvest now underway in the district things are generally looking good, says Grant Lastiwka, with Alberta Agriculture in Olds.

The grain harvest is going well with recent hot and dry conditions helping farmers keep in the fields, he said.

"Harvest is nicely getting started," Lastiwka told the Gazette. "From what I'm hearing the yields look pretty favourable. I would say that things are looking good with the exception being the pasture situation.

"I know that the moisture levels have been varied even across our region. The fact that we started the year with so favourable moisture in so many cases for annual crops was very fortunate for us.

"It looks like it is giving us better yields than you may think you could get; yields of the grains."

There are some crops that still need more time, he said.

"We've got green spots in some of these fields, so depending on the crop and the opportunities, crops like malt barley where you can't use desiccate (which removes moisture from the crop) to ripen them, to mature them, people have to wait on those," he said.

"There are areas in these fields where the moisture was more adequate and that is delaying some of the ability to cut. But for others, they are going to have to decide whether they want to spray it with desiccate and ripen the green and diminish the yields and the quality of it, to capture the already mature crop.

"A lot of producers that are going to straight combine or want to capture more similar maturities will choose to desiccate the crop so that it is more easily harvested."

The dry conditions this summer have been something less than ideal for second-cut hay crops, he said.

"The heat side of things has certainly been hard on the older hay crops and the regrowth of the older hay crops and hard on pasture," he said.

"The hayfields had very good first yields and good quality of first yields for many of the producers. Depending on that situation, the newer crops that were harvested early have grown back and are either being harvested now or have been harvested.

"The dry conditions have affected the second cut yield. If you get to the older hay stands, they are the ones that don't have really good regrowth."

Continued warm, dry conditions would be generally welcome over the coming weeks, he said.

"The majority of people would like to see it staying dry to get their combining done, to get their swathing done," he said. "The fact is that's a little different for the hay people I suppose, and the pasture people."

A lack of water in dugouts has compelled some producers to move cattle in the district, he said.