Snow Leaves 2 Million Crop Acres Stuck on Canadian Prairie Fields
- Unharvested acres must come off field before spring planting
- Weather threatens to delay seeding by two weeks: ProMarket
April snowfall in parts of Canada’s prairies has halted efforts to harvest more than 2 million acres (809,370 hectares) of grain leftover from 2016, delaying spring planting in some areas by at least two weeks.
In Alberta alone, there’s as many as 1.5 million acres that remain unharvested, and gathering has been hampered by light snow falling daily in central and northern areas, according to James Wright, a risk analyst with the province’s Agriculture Financial Services Corporation. Snow and cool weather have also slowed progress in Saskatchewan, where more than 1 million metric tons of grain is still sitting on fields from last year’s harvest after excess moisture made fields too wet to combine, according to the province’s agriculture ministry.