Producers looking at slightly later harvest due to cooler than normal year

A cooler than usual summer means that harvest could be a bit later this year.

Some experts have noted that the summer of 2025 is the coolest in five years. In 2021, Saskatoon had 32 days where temperatures topped the 30ºC mark and Regina had 33 days where the mercury surpassed 30ºC. This year, Saskatoon had six days of 30ºC or higher and Regina saw nine.

It has been a cooler and wetter than normal summer in Saskatchewan. This summer also saw an abundance of wildfire smoke, which had its pros and cons for plant development.

“That’s the idea—trees, plants, they consume carbon,” said Kevin Wilson who farms just south of Wawota. “There’s been a lot of talk that it’s beneficial for the crops. We’ll wait and see.”

Despite getting his crop in the ground in early May, Wilson isn’t anticipating an early start to harvest on his land.

“It varies; there’s some crops that are coming in quick,” he said. “If the weather turns around, if we could get some heat, it depends whether guys have desiccated or not, or whether they’re waiting for that. Our little wheat patch here, we desiccated it so it’s dead ripe, and our barley is ready to be swathed and go down, too. We had that seeded on the 6th of May, so it’s been that type of a year where the humidity, the cool, and the dampness allowed the crops to continue to keep growing and not ripen really fast.”

In the Rocanville area, Rylar Hutchinson believes there might be a chance that he gets in the field before the calendar flips over from August.

“I haven’t knocked anything down, but I did spray my wheat yesterday (August 19), so give it seven to 10 days, and I’ll be looking at trying some of my wheat—weather pending,” he said. “It could be close to the last weekend of August before I try.”

As with many producers, Hutchinson’s canola crop will remain standing for a few more weeks.

“Canola is a bit out yet to spray, then it’s a good two weeks of waiting,” he said. “There’s a break in the wheat and canola this year since we had that three-inch rain at the start of May, and post ones seeding for a good week and half.”

In the Gerald area, Kevin Hruska is eyeing the first weekend in September, noting this year’s harvest will be “a little bit delayed.”

“I don’t think we’ll go until September 5, 6, or 7, somewhere in there,” he said. “We’re not even pre-harvesting yet, we’re delaying for a few days. We’ve been having really showery, wet weather. We’re not flooding or anything like that, but we’re getting a couple of tenths here and there, and it’s really delaying things, it’s slowing things down.”

Despite the wet and cool weather, Hruska is pleased with what he’s seeing in the fields.

“The canola is still growing and filling,” he said. “We’ve got quite a bit of rain, and the canola really turned around. The wheat crops look excellent and so do the canola crops. Unless we get some kind of surprise, we have really good crops.”

Near Moosomin, there are some producers already beginning harvest with a head-start on peas.

“There are a few guys started around here on some barley and peas, and I think as a general first consensus, things are looking pretty decent,” said Moosomin-area producer Trevor Green. “I have a neighbor doing some peas, and they seem to be hauling a lot of them off the field, so they must be doing good.”

Green anticipates starting harvest operations before the end of August.

“I would imagine we’ll be into barley by next week,” he said. “I have some green feed we’re going to try and knock down tomorrow and get wrapped up before we get started and hopefully get that done. I would say probably by next week we’ll be in the barley for sure.”

While what’s in the field is looking good, Green says what it’s selling for is another story.

“When you start seeing $7 (per bushel) wheat, it’s pretty tough to make a go of $7 wheat,” Green said. Another example is canola being in the $13 per bushel range— which was not bad 10 or 15 years ago, but with the rising costs of land, inputs, and equipment, when market prices are not following suit, it’s hard for producers.

“When we saw that $20 canola, that just put the price of all the combines up, the air seeders up, the fertilizer up, and then all that quantity prices drop back down, and all that stuff stayed up,” Green said. “Every time it does that cycle, everything goes up but the farmers’ margin!”

Conversely, on the cattle side, the recent rains have been a boon for pastures.

“I’ve heard of a little bit of second-cut hay getting taken off,” Green said. “We’re grazing annuals right now—we’ve taken our cows off of the pasture and we’re grazing annuals now—so they’re in nice, lush green stuff three quarters of the way up their back, so they’re pretty happy!”

Insects also seem to have been mild this growing season with a very light presence of flea beetles overall and some late-season grasshoppers, which Green believes won’t amount to much damage at this point.

“They’ll run out of steam here pretty soon,” he said. “When everything turns brown, they’ll start going away.”

This story was originally published in The World-Spectator. It is republished under a Creative Commons license as part of the Local Journalism Initiative.