The AgriPost
October 28, 2016
Manitoba Crops Average to Above Yield But Quality Varies Greatly
Sweet Potatoes Showing Promise as a Manitoban Crop By Les Kletke Sajjad Rao acknowledges that sweet potato production in Manitoba has a long way to go to commercialization but after 4 years of working with the crop, he believes it has potential. The crop caught Rao’s attention when he came to Manitoba and was looking for something that would fit climate wise and add to the rotation on Manitoba farms. The crop that originated in Central American and has migrated northward demands a longer growing season than most areas of the province offer but Rao has successfully screened varieties that will mature in Manitoba. He points out that the crop is not like the typical Irish potato most people think of nor is it a yam which people use the names interchangeably. “With the Irish potato we eat the tubers, but with sweet potatoes we eat the roots,” he said. “The plant is very different and so is the way we propagate it. With Irish potatoes we using cuttings from the tuber with sweet potatoes we use cutting or slips of the plant.” The process is much more labour intensive also. “At this point I would not even suggest a comparison to the traditional crop,” he said. “The costs are so different as well as the yield. We will begin working on the agronomy in a year or two. For now we are still working on selecting the varieties and moving from the test plot to field production.” He plans to have one or two plots within an acre in field style production next year. continued on page 2 Sajjad Rap of Assiniboine Community College checks the harvest on his sweet potato plots. The crop continues to show promise in Manitoba.
By Harry Siemens Exciting, difficult, frustrating, huge, sometimes binbuster and sometimes not is how farmers describe the entire cropping season from start to almost finished in Manitoba. First off, Manitoba Agriculture reports that crops across Manitoba are generally at or above the five-year average while, quality is average to below average for the majority of crops. Commenting on its final crop report on October 17, Pam de Rocquigny, a Cereal Crop Specialist with Manitoba Agriculture said, due to some extreme weather, yields are at or slightly above the five year average and, as the result of the wet harvest, the quality of most crops is average to below average. “So for crop yields, just generally speaking, they were either at or slightly above our five years averages for most crop types,” said de Rocquigny. “Having said that there are lower than average yields for various crop types that were reported in some areas of the province.” Those decreases in yield were largely due to weather events such as excess moisture. “We had some wind storms that resulted in some lodging and some stalk breakage and we’ve seen a higher number of hail claims that would impact yields,” commented de Rocquigny. She said higher disease pressure effected many crop types this year as well. In some cases, yields were surprisingly good but at the same time they were not record breaking by any stretch this year. “We’ve seen a wet harvest period that resulted in some downgrading due to weathering and disease pressure for some crops types as well resulted in downgrading. So quality and yields are both variable across the province,” said de Rocquigny. Provincially, the harvest is estimated at 92 percent complete with 99 percent of the cereal crops and field peas, 95 percent of the canola and edible beans, 88 percent of the soybeans, 50 percent of the flax and 20 to 25 percent of the sunflowers in the bins. Turning to fall seeded cereals Manitoba Agriculture reported that those number of acres planted in the province this year has been about on par with that of last year. De Rocquigny said planting of the winter wheat and fall rye, the main winter cereal crops grown in Manitoba, started in the first week of September. “We’re probably going to continued on page 2