Local farmers brace for reduced yields as they battle dry, hot summer
ST. AGATHA — There haven’t been many breaks for Trevor Herrle’s irrigation pumps lately, which have been working overtime to keep his parched vegetables growing in this hot, dry summer.
The St. Agatha area farmer, who grows more than 200 acres of sweet corn, peas, beans, cucumber, beets, spinach, strawberries and other crops, has been putting his two water wells to the test to make up for the lack of rain.
Monday’s downpour was a relief, he said, but Waterloo Region is still way below historical norms for rainfall over the past three months.
The region received just 27.3 millimetres of rain in July — a far cry from the monthly average of 83.9 mm, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada. June brought 59.4 mm, about a quarter less rain than normal.
For farmers like Herrle, that means extra electricity and fuel costs of running irrigation equipment nearly every night.
“It’s almost going around the clock,” said Herrle, owner of Herrle’s Country Farm Market. “I don’t think we’ve ever dealt with this kind of
heat ... We’ve been watching the radar so closely for rain.”
All that irrigation and high temperatures has his fields growing like crazy, he said. His farm recently gave 130 bushels of beans to the food bank because he can’t sell them fast enough.
But many Waterloo Region farmers who can’t irrigate cash crops like soybeans, corn or wheat are left praying to the skies and bracing for reduced yields.
They’ve been battling dry conditions and above-average heat since May, and many fields were already showing stress before Monday’s rain.
“For some farmers, somewhere in Ontario, this is going to do them in,” predicted Jeff Stager, a Roseville-area farmer. “Others may be just hoping to break even.”
It’s terrible timing for soybean farmers, who’ve watched the price of their crop drop by more than 10 per cent in a trade spat with the U.S. and China, he said.
“The price is probably the biggest concern, and then the weather has been a challenge,” he said. “Broad-based, general rains from a cold front are the Holy Grail, instead of the spotty stuff we had last night.”
Corn is the most sensitive to drought of the big cash crops, Stager said. Dry conditions create uneven fields, wilt the plant and make them more susceptible to disease.
That doesn’t mean consumers will notice any change in the price of their Corn Flakes, but it might mean more farmers are leaning on government insurance programs to help cover their losses, Stager said.
There’s still a lot of growing left to do, he cautioned, but farmers need much more steady rain than they’ve been getting.
“At this point in the season, the corn is showing the most damage. It’s taking a beating right now,” Stager said. “But I guess we’ll see what happens when the crop comes in.”
gmercer@therecord.com, Twitter: @MercerRecord