The Canadian Situation
My good chum Brad in Southern Saskatchewan was the first guy I know to flag up the exceptionally wet sowing conditions in the spring, where he was a good few weeks ahead of anybody else blowing the whistle and banging the drum.
Suffice to say then that Brad has form. You'll be interested to hear what he's got to say about the current situation this time round then I'm sure:
"Another gloomy day presents itself for us in western Canada. Another in a long litany for us. With at most 20% of the crop in store and little progress in the past fortnight, stress levels are rising.
"Crop areas already reduced with seeding abandonment and flooding are now proving impossible to harvest through most areas. Quality is taking a major thrashing. Any cereals or pulse crops put to swath are pretty much write offs save any salvage value of feed.
"Standing grains, some being ripe for several weeks amid continuous moist conditions, are breaking down, mildewed and even showing signs of sprouting. We still show little prospect from the forecast over the next ten days of making significant progress.
"The cool wet weather has also prolonged the maturing of late seeded crops of which there were many. So along with quality issues, the general frost predicted for this late week, will curtail some production as well.
"Last season we had 20% of our harvest to go heading into October. That was nerve wracking enough. This is ............well ??........some level worse than nerve wracking I suppose!"
So I guess you could say that things aren't going to swimmingly for Brad, which is odd given the amount of water that they've got over there. So to cheer him up I'm going to send him a little present. Here you go Brad. It's alright I know he's got a sense of humour, he's Canadian not American!:
Suffice to say then that Brad has form. You'll be interested to hear what he's got to say about the current situation this time round then I'm sure:
"Another gloomy day presents itself for us in western Canada. Another in a long litany for us. With at most 20% of the crop in store and little progress in the past fortnight, stress levels are rising.
"Crop areas already reduced with seeding abandonment and flooding are now proving impossible to harvest through most areas. Quality is taking a major thrashing. Any cereals or pulse crops put to swath are pretty much write offs save any salvage value of feed.
"Standing grains, some being ripe for several weeks amid continuous moist conditions, are breaking down, mildewed and even showing signs of sprouting. We still show little prospect from the forecast over the next ten days of making significant progress.
"The cool wet weather has also prolonged the maturing of late seeded crops of which there were many. So along with quality issues, the general frost predicted for this late week, will curtail some production as well.
"Last season we had 20% of our harvest to go heading into October. That was nerve wracking enough. This is ............well ??........some level worse than nerve wracking I suppose!"
So I guess you could say that things aren't going to swimmingly for Brad, which is odd given the amount of water that they've got over there. So to cheer him up I'm going to send him a little present. Here you go Brad. It's alright I know he's got a sense of humour, he's Canadian not American!:
