By Tom Collins
PICTON — The dry weather has made this year’s winter wheat short but farmers still might see a possible record yield.
Lloyd Crowe, who runs Reynolds Farms in Picton with his uncle Larry Reynolds, started combining on July 11, his earliest start ever and a week to 10 days ahead of normal.
He was one of the first in Eastern Ontario in the field and was averaging more than 100 bushels per acre through the first five days.
“On the poorer land, wheat is quite short,” he said, saying yields there are about 50-60 bu/ac. “Sometimes that’s all you can get on average.”
Peter Johnson, former OMAFRA cereals specialist and now an agronomist with Real Agriculture, believes there could be a potential record-setting yield.
The highest recorded yield was 83.9 bu/ac in 2006.
Last year’s crop averaged 74.4 bu/ac.
Western Ontario farmers are reporting high numbers, with some yields at 136 bu/ac.
Just more than 1 million acres of winter wheat was planted last fall, the third largest in Ontario of the past 30 years. That is up from 660,000 acres the previous year.
