As harvest quickly approaches, many producers are worried that an early frost could hurt late-seeded crops. LeftField Commodity Research recently took part in a field tour across the prairies and Vice-President Jon Driedger says frost wasn't the only concern producers had.
"Across most of western Canada, farmers have been pretty cautious about making forward commitments with sales, and that's no surprise. Of course, last year was such a challenging year, early spring was challenging for different reasons, very dry in the western part of the prairies, excessively wet and delayed in the eastern part, and so farmers by in large are a little undersold here at this point in the summer compared to where they might otherwise be."
Canola seems to be very mixed across the prairies according to Driedger.
"In the eastern half of the prairies, the canola looks pretty good, although late, and so there's some risk of frost because of the later developing crop. As you look more in the western part of the prairies, the canola's generally a little below average, maybe the one that a lot of farmers cited as being the worst on their farm."
It's not all bad, however, as Driedger says they saw a lot of crops doing very well.
"The cereals tended to be looking the best of the different crops. Something like spring wheat kind of looking at an average plus, again depending a little bit on the region. Generally the barly looks really good, I think the oats tended to look quite good, although didn't look as closely at oats, but certainly, the cereals tended to look the best."
