According to Manitoba Agricultural Services Corporation's (MASC) latest estimates, field pea acreage in the province has more than doubled this year.

With about 95 per cent of data keyed from seeded acreage reports, MASC estimates area seeded to field peas is at almost 169,000 acres, while reports from last year reflect just over 67,000 acres were seeded to field peas.

"It still doesn't make it, you know, a huge majority crop here in Manitoba, but anytime you double the acreage of any crop, that is a significant increase," says MASC's acting vice president of insurance operations, David van Deynze.

Van Deynze says overall, there weren't too many surprises in the seeded acreage reports, with canola acres remaining fairly steady, while soybeans jumped by almost 190,000 acres, reaching about 1.6 million acres, according to the estimates.

Despite many of the wet growing conditions that have plagued areas of the province during this growing season, the reports also show significantly less acres were too wet to seed this year, compared to last year.

"It was dry early on (this year) — there was actually some concerns that it might have been too dry for a while," van Deynze says. "Producers were able to get on early the fields nice and early, and most of the seeding happened before any wet weather really started to hit. It was very late May, early June before the moisture really started to hit, and in some areas, hasn't really stopped. So, majority of acres were seeded, absolutely, but there's been some moisture stress in some areas on those crops after they were seeded."

Other acreage fluctuations of note this year include a significant drop in confectionary sunflowers, which is estimated at about 28,000 acres, and flax also dropped to about 66,000 acres provincially.