The pulse of the industry includes growers of dry peas, lentils, chickpeas and beans, and Canada’s prairies are set for harvest.
Favorable weather has set them up for good yields this year.
Bruce Burnett with MarketsFarm based in Winnipeg says that most of Canadian prairie farmers are seeing good-to-excellent results so far, but are in a cautious mood after last year’s frustrating fall harvest that dragged on for months.
“So far, so good. We are expecting a fairly big change in the weather pattern at the beginning of September, where we’re going to get a lot cooler,” Burnett said. “The imprint of the 2019 harvest is still in the forefront of most farmers’ minds, so until this crop gets off, farmers aren’t going to say too much.”
Harvest of pulse crops, grains and wheat started up in the southern prairies about two weeks ago. Lentils and peas, which are grown mostly in the southern region, are pretty well wrapped up, but in terms of overall crop coverage, Canada’s prairies are only about 25 percent off.
“We’ll start to see progress accelerate as the harvest moves north. Yields and quality have been very good,” Burnett said. “We’re looking at an improvement in production this year, but we still need a couple more weeks to say something definite about prop quality.”