Hot, dry weather can be hard on crops

But it could always be worse

Spring moisture helped most crops germinate but the recent lack of rain combined with the heat could affect the yields according to Jesse Cole with the Agriculture Financial Services Corporation.  

This kind of heat isn't great for anything except for those farmers who planted a corn crop, said Cole, who added "the corn loves this kind of weather."

But flowering plants such as canola and peas can suffer from a condition known as heat blasting. According to Cole when that happens flowers fall off and then pods don't form which means seeds are not produced. "So we might see a little bit of yield loss from that kind of stuff this year."

However Cole added "I think people are still pretty optimistic, based on the early moisture, it's good crop out there in the field still, but are a little bit concerned and especially about some of those crops like canola and peas that can blast in this heat."

One thing that hasn't been much of an issue so far this year is hail.  "We're tracking way below average on the number of claims that we're seeing. And I think that's just because we had some cooler weather when we got all the rain. So, you know, rain and hail are usually correlated, but when all the rain dropped, it was pretty cool. So we didn't get those good updraft conditions that hail storms form in and kind of missed a lot of the hail."  

Cole noted the number of hail claims is the lowest the corporation has seen in the last 25 years.