How bad is it.

[rodbradshaw]

Walked fields today with local consultant. Barley is coming out the side of the boot and bottom leaves are gone and with the amount of leaf disease present you would think we have had a ton of rain. He mentioned that a lot of crops have flowered but are not filling. We have not hit the panic button yet but we will be keeping a close eye on them just in case we have to go to the salvage route. Some fields are definitely turning white in our area and you can see great uneveness due to soil conditions.
Was down near Lethbridge last week and was amazed at the great variation in crop conditions. Some of the irrigated crops looked poorer than some of our crops as they didn't stool and thus yields have to be reduced.

[TOM4CWB]

Thinking of you..

Delores M. of NE Edmonton (Bruderheim)is dead. last Friday...

450 cattle, what else was bothering him we don't know...

Did it infront of his son, who couldn't reach him in time to stop him...

There can be no question this is a bad situation...

Every day as things go down hill, it is depressing, to see things die...

Was looking at canola that had a decent stand, was hoping to salvage, only in low areas - 25% of field - are the plants poding.. other areas have plants with 1-5 pods per plant, all the other pods aborted... and when I open the good pods 30% of the seeds are damaged, watery brown...

Some fields have still only had less than one inch of rain since seeding...

Peas are 6 inches tall with a pod per plant except in the lower areas, dryer spots have no pods...

This is a time that faith in a better future is a must, denial of the reality of this problem is still everywhere, we have never seen anything like this in the past in this area... Spoiled I guess...

People just freeze up... don't know what to do... grasshoppers, lygus bugs on Canola...

[TOM4CWB]

They buried my neighbour this afternoon...

THE rain in the past week has helped fill the wheat and barley, still not enough to start second growth...

Late seeded canola is back in bloom, then cooked on Wed/Thur, now back cool, don't know but it looks pretty well finished...

I am amazed how an half an inch of rain can fill wheat, it is astounding...

Went to get 36ft straight cut header, will park some combines as now 1 combine can do more than 2 could before... have to make the best of this, as seed genetics are in as bad or worse shape than the cow herd... Common seed will have to be used in some cases as this disaster wrecked over 50% of seed production in Alberta I estimate...

With fusarium problems for importing seed into Alberta, recertification of seed to build stock seeds back up will likely be needed...

[rodbradshaw]

Had a preharvest done on barley today. It came in at about half of our long term yield. Barley is going to need to stay at over $4 just to break even on the rented land with rents tied to the price of barley.

[charliep]

With a 9 bln corn crop south of us and carryovers under 1 bln bu, the question is how close CBT corn comes to averaging $3/bu. Not much chance barley will drop below $4/bu this fall/winter. Spring is open to debate if we kill demand as much as I think might happen and a combination of increased acres/better yield prospects promises a big crop. Still lots of action ahead.