There are roughly 225 crop reporters across Saskatchewan, but the Ministry of Agriculture could always use more.
The Ministry uses the winter months and any events they attend, such as the recent Western Canadian Crop Production Show in Saskatoon, to recruit people who may be interested in contributing to the weekly provincial crop report.
Tyce Masich, a Crops Extension Specialist with the Ministry of Ag out of the Moose Jaw regional office, said signing up is easy by going online to the Saskatchewan.ca website and fill out the form.
Masich said you don't have to be a farmer to become a crop reporter.
"If you work in the ag industry and kind of have a general sense of crop production in your region, you would be a perfect fit for a crop reporter. So any agrologist, grain buyers, that sort of thing, they would be good fits for crop reporters. We like all the perspectives we get."
Material needed to report during the 2026 growing season will be sent to volunteers in March, he said.
Each Monday, a survey with five to eight questions is provided, ranging from rainfall to growing conditions to crop yields, depending on the time of year.
Masich said reporters can leave some questions blank if they can't get an answer, but the one that is mandatory to fill in is rainfall amounts.
Reporters have until the following Wednesday at 9 a.m. to submit the surveys, which go to specialists like Masich who then take the data and create the crop report.
"Usually I have somebody else helping me out, just pulling some of the data and filtering through it. But it usually takes me five to six hours each week." he said of preparing the crop report which is usually released Thursday morning.
While the number of crop reporters covers much of the province, Masich said there are Rural Municipalities that don't have one and having more than one in an R.M. is a good thing.
"Conditions can really vary, even within an R.M. So we value all the information that comes in to us, and the more, the merrier," he said. "More information we have coming, just the more robust our report is each week."
