Bad weather playing havoc with this year’s harvest
Downgraded quality because of moisture will hurt prices of the crops already in
REGINA In his 50 years of farming, Don Herndier said he has never seen a harvest with such a prolonged bout of poor weather.
On his farm located just north of Wolseley around 100 kilometres east of Regina, Herndier said from the beginning of September until just recently, too much rain and snow kept him from taking his wheat, barley, oat and canola crops off the fields.
“Last year we finished harvest September 4. This year we just had our peas off by September 4 and we went just about seven weeks without good harvest weather,” he said in an interview Saturday.
“We finally just got tired of waiting and started taking off tough and damp grain. And as of last night, or actually as of 6:30 this morning, we are finished except for one little low spot that froze in our canola and one hilltop that never came up until just about the first of July, so we’ve got about 20 acres of canola left to go.”
While he is thankful to have the vast majority of his crop in, Herndier estimated that the downgraded grain quality caused by the moisture will cost him around $400,000.
Mildew and sprouting have been the two biggest culprits for Herndier, and he said he will likely only get around $4 a bushel for his grain when he normally pulls in around $6 a bushel.
“It’s really affecting a lot of people’s health, like I’ve been really stressed out,” he said. “This is my 50th year of farming so I can take a lot of stuff ... but this year has been right from day one — right from seeding — stress through seeding and germination and that kind of stuff and now right through till fall.”
He noted that there are still a lot of farmers in his area that only have around 50 per cent of their crops harvested, and that many farmers without grain dryers are simply waiting, hoping they will get a streak of dry weather to rid their crops of the excess moisture.
Herndier has a grain dryer, and while he typically only uses it to dry a few loads each year, this year he anticipates running it almost constantly for the next two months.
“I’m going to be probably running my little batch dryer till the wheels fall off,” he said.
Across Saskatchewan, 83 per cent of the crops are now in the bin, according to the province’s crop report for the week of Oct. 15 to 21 — although progress ranges drastically from region to region.
The northeast is the furthest along with 94 per cent of the crop combined, with the west-central, northwest and southwest regions following not too far behind. The southeast sits at only 78 per cent and the east-central region is at a meagre 66 per cent.
Cory Jacobs, a crop extension specialist with the Ministry of Agriculture, said farmers are definitely behind on harvest compared to the average year and are feeling the pressure.
“In a normal year we would be like 99 per cent done ... A lot of producers would be done by now and would be doing winter field work and kind of wrapping up before the snow hits,” he said, adding that the colder temperatures over the weekend and into the week would only be slowing down progress even more.
Jacobs remained optimistic that there will be an opportunity for winter combining into November, as long as the snow holds off and temperatures don’t drop too much, but said the situation was “definitely not ideal.”