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Farm-Scape, Episode 2215

The Canadian Wheat Board reports the supply of feed barley and the supply of feed wheat from the harvest of fall seeded cereal crops will be lower this year than last.

The harvest of the fall seed cereals is over 80 percent complete and should be finished within a week while the spring seeded cereals range from well advanced in the drier parts of Manitoba to just getting started in Saskatchewan and Alberta.

Canadian Wheat Board Weather and Crop Survelance director Bruce Burnett says preliminary indications are that the feed supply will be lower this year.

"Certainly the barley crop has been impacted by the dry hot conditions this summertime.

At the wheat board we've reduced our estimate 700 thousand tonnes from our June estimate and down close to two million tonnes from last year's production, down to about 9.8 million tonnes which would be one of the smaller barley crops that we've produced in the last five years although certainly not as low as in the very severe drought year of 2002.

In terms of the harvest quality of the wheats which, again, gives you some of the feedgrain supplies out there, on the spring wheat side it's a little bit early to tell.

Certainly it's positive that were starting on an early harvest for quality just because that generally lends us to having more grades up in the milling category but, in terms the winter cereals that are almost all harvested, very few parts of the winter wheat harvest have been downgraded this year.

It's come in on very very good quality so the supply of feed from the winter cereal harvest is going to probably be down year on year at least anyway."

Burnett notes the spring seeded cereal harvest will probably be in full swing across the prairies toward the end of August.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.