Manitoba Co-Operator
Posted by Marney Blunt
CNS Canada – Manitoba edible bean crops have been progressing well over the past few weeks — but not enough, it seems, to push harvest back up to normal time slots.
“The harvest is going to be a little later than normal,” said Francois Labelle, interim executive director for the Manitoba Pulse Growers Association. “It will be in September, we won’t see any beans harvested in August.
“We’re seeing a lot of leaf drop (and) early maturing going on in the edible beans now, and there are reports of some fields of edible beans having some pre-harvest desiccation going on.”
Other than late planting this spring, edible bean crops in Manitoba have been fortunate enough to have dodged bullets on many production issues.
“It’s been a very light year on most production issues,” said Labelle. “I guess the one thing (that helped) was the dry period in August — it sure held back the disease — and we haven’t had a whole lot of insect issues reported.”
The precipitation much of the province received last weekend didn’t have much of an impact on the crops.
“Some of the beans will probably not be helped by it because they’re too far matured,” said Labelle. “And some of the later ones, there’s still an opportunity to help size up the beans and make them slightly larger, which has a significant effect on yield.”
Producers are now looking ahead and hoping for beneficial weather conditions in the last few weeks approaching harvest, he said.
“We’re looking forward to hopefully good weather so we can get a quality crop off of what is there and make marketing easier this year.”
– Marney Blunt writes for Commodity News Service Canada, a Winnipeg company specializing in grain and commodity market reporting.