Corn crops are loving this heat

There's a sense among farmers here the southeast that crops will do okay this year despite the cold, wet spring and the current heat wave.

Sieg Peters of HerbSigWil Farms at Randolph, west of Mitchell tells us there was damage to their canola from excess moisture this spring but adds producers here are much better off than in some other parts of the province. "We've had damage there's no doubt about it. Research would suggest you can lose 50 per cent of your crop if it's been flooded or saturated for over a week and we had that earlier on. But the question is whether you take half of 60 and then you still have got quite a bit left in bushels of canola." Peters adds some crops could be exceptional, noting the corn has jumped up in this heat wave and is looking great. And he tells us soybeans are also looking very good. "They still look as though, if moisture is correct for the rest of the season, they could be excellent."

Ken Krahn at Niverville says his crops have also suffered some setbacks but trusts they will come out okay. He explains, "We had 30 per cent of our land that was flooded with the flood water from the Red River. But we did get everything seeded, and, everything progressed quite well at the beginning. Now we are under some heat stress here but hopefully the moisture will come here soon and we'll get an inch or two and the crops will recover from the heat stress and do quite well I trust." Krahn adds, while the crop score has dropped somewhat in recent weeks, our region of the province is still in pretty good shape.

Meanwhile, we are told the winter wheat harvest will get underway in about 2 weeks.