After a dry start to the farming season, Mother Nature has helped out producers in the province with some precipitation over the last couple of weeks. This has allowed crops to catch up or be much further along in their development stage.

The weekly Crop Report released by the provincial government shows recent rains have reduced the stress on farmers, but with harvest about six to eight weeks away, more is needed. 

"Things have definitely improved. We need to be kind of realistic too, because we started out in kind of a stressful situation with the conditions," said Cory Jacob, a Crop Extension Specialist with the Ministry of Agriculture. "With the rainfall we've had, I think we're coming along quite well. We could definitely use another shot if rain here right around heading time to get everything filling well and help the yield potential."

Steady rains have been few and far between in 2019 and a lot of the recent moisture was part of storms and severe thundershowers. Jacob said while the rains were beneficial, some of it was actually harmful to crops. 

"There were reports of hail damage and that varied from minor to quite severe damage. The rain, if it brought a few inches at once, we are hearing reports of some root rot sitting in the lentils," he noted.

Other crop damage farmers were concerned with in the past seven days included localized flooding, strong winds and insects such as grasshoppers. 

The biggest thing now for producers is hoping crops can reach their full development cycle. Some early seeded crops, such as canola, are struggling in areas around Saskatchewan. 

"We are a little behind still and that's just because of how we started out the year," Jacob explained. "We had some crops in the ground and then just waited for rain. Particularly canola, we have some crops that are still young stage seedlings, to putting on a few leaves, to crops that are flowering. Sometimes those are all in the same field at those different stages, and that's going to make management decisions a lot more difficult."

Crop conditions generally range from poor to good across the province. Sixty-seven percent of fall cereals and 32 percent of spring cereals are in the heading stage, while only 28 percent of canola and 54 percent of mustard are flowering. 

Topsoil conditions are rated as 79 percent adequate, while hay quality is recorded as just 47 percent good.