Farmers rush to finish harvest after snow delay
EDMONTON • On Saturday night, some farmers were still out in their fields, headlights blazing, sending clouds of dust blowing out across traffic on Highway 2, just south of Edmonton.
Alberta farmers pushed to get as much of an estimated $3 billion in unharvested crops — wheat, canola, barley and pulses — off the fields as they could over the weekend, after an unseasonably cold September and early snows caused some farms to be delayed by up to six weeks.
Kevin Bender, a farmer and chair of the Alberta Wheat Commission, said the weather was great over the weekend.
“And the forecast looks good for all this week yet, too, so that’ll make a big difference in the situation,” Bender said.
“The shorter days can affect (the harvest) a little bit, just being that it takes longer for the frost to burn off in the morning and we just generally can’t get as long of days in.”
But even if farmers can finish the harvest this week, some will likely face major losses, as some crops are of poorer quality, and the increased costs of harvesting, such as running grain dryers non-stop, will further cut into profit margins.
As of Oct. 16, just less than 50 per cent of major crops had been harvested, up about three per cent from the week before, according to the latest report released Friday by the province, which was optimistic that “considerable crop” would be harvested in the coming days.
There are a few reasons why a late harvest is a problem for Canada, the world’s biggest canola exporter and one of the top wheat suppliers.
For one, crops need to be dry (or at least dryish) before a combine can harvest them. If they’ve been flattened by snow or are generally waterlogged, they take longer to dry on cooler days. If, after harvesting, it needs to dry further, you can use a grain dryer, but that costs money, said John Guelly, vice-chair of the Alberta Canola Producers Commission.
And then there’s the quality of the crop.
Bender said the “quality is poorer” with wheat harvested now versus wheat harvested before the snow.
The worst case scenario for prairie farmers is winter arrives full force before fields are clear. In that case, farmers would have to salvage what they can next spring, but most of the leftover grain would be lost.
One indicator of wheat quality is weight per volume (basically, its density). When wheat is mature, if it gets wet again, germination begins. This, in turn, causes starch to break down, leading to holes in the grain and making it lighter. Wet grain also swells and may not shrink when it dries, further reducing the “test weight,” and therefore the quality. Mold and fungi growth also degrades the quality of soggy grain.
The best wheat goes to premium markets — say, Japan, which ended a ban on Canadian wheat earlier this summer — while the lower quality wheat is sold for animal feed, at a reduced price. The Alberta Wheat Commission is estimating losses of $240 million from degraded wheat quality this year.
Concerns are similar for canola: the biggest problem, said Guelly, is that canola struggled to mature because of the smoke that blanketed Alberta because of the British Columbia wildfires. The basic measure of canola quality, he said, is the amount of “green seed,” which is when frost arrests chlorophyll-clearing maturation in the seed, and it can be locked-in by a freeze.
“As soon as you start getting double-digits (per centwise) green, you can take the price per bushel and cut it in half,” Guelly said.
Still, the industry took advantage of the nice weather when it finally came.
“The combines here in my neighbourhood are rollin’ steady,” said Guelly late last week.
“Everybody’s been geared up and ready to go while it’s been wet, and everybody’s going hard now ... it certainly looks a lot better than it did a week ago.”