NEWS
THE WESTERN PRODUCER | WWW.PRODUCER.COM | JANUARY 5, 2012
WEATHER | SASKATCHEWAN
WEATHER | ALBERTA
Weather woes
Above normal spring runoff predicted for Saskatchewan
Farmers across the Prairies grappled with rain, floods and hail in 2011 as they struggled to put a crop in the ground. Many simply couldn’t get seeds in at all. Western Producer reporters talked to farmers and weather experts to see what happened, and what the forecast is for 2012.
BY KAREN BRIERE REGINA BUREAU
A trivia game about Saskatchewan would inevitably include questions about the weather, and a good question for 2011 might be: which part of the province received the most rain? Many areas were flooded and soggy, but Stockholm and surrounding area received the most precipitation. The region received 617 millimetres of rain between April 1 and Oct. 10, according to the provincial crop report. The Bengough area was second highest at 609 mm while Ceylon received 575 mm. Arlynn Kurtz, reeve of the Rural Municipality of Fertile Belt, was worried six weeks into the growing season when one-third of that rainfall had already fallen and repair costs had already exceeded $1 million. Further south, Coalfields reeve Stan Lainton didn’t turn a wheel in 2011. In early December, he said the RM was still grappling with washouts and road repair. The fact that many farmers couldn’t get to their fields contributed to the estimated 6.2 million acres that weren’t seeded. Another 2.2 million acres were subsequently flooded out. The dry, long fall that followed may prove to be a godsend for southeastern Saskatchewan. Doug Johnson, director of regional services for the Saskatchewan Watershed Authority, said fall conditions were better than they were in 2010. “We have moist soil conditions (and) sloughs are full, but I don’t think we’re in the same situation as 2010,” he said at a November meeting. But even with normal snow pack, runoff will be above normal next spring. How that affects farming operations remains to be seen. Farmers in southeastern Saskatchewan took advantage of the fall to seed more winter wheat and fall rye. Acreage increased 74 percent and 13 percent, respectively. Total seeded acreage in the province in 2011 was about a million acres. Yields were generally average to above-average. Quality and grade were above the 10-year average, with downgrading caused by hail, frost, ergot and wheat midge. By fall, many regions reported that excess topsoil moisture had dried up. Fifteen percent of cropland was considered to have surplus moisture in the southeast, while six percent was short. That compared to two percent excess and six percent very short in the southwest, three percent surplus and three percent very short in eastcentral, and one percent surplus and 10 percent very short in west-central. The northern regions reported no surplus moisture. The northwest reported eight percent very short and the northeast reported 24 percent short. The area that saw the least precipitation was Lake Lenore with 149 mm, followed by Maple Creek at 174 mm.
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Rain clouds were plentiful last spring across many parts of the prairies. |
FILE PHOTO
WEATHER | MANITOBA
Soggy spring; unseeded acres a record BY ROBERT ARNASON BRANDON BUREAU
It’s a given that prairie folk love to talk about the weather. But in 2011, the never-ending talk of rain, floods and extreme heat was too much for most Manitobans to bear. “It’s day after day. It’s not just the farm, it’s your basement … and the sirens going off in town because they need sandbaggers again,” Andy Barclay, who farms north of Souris, Man., said in June. “It just gets tiring. That’s all anyone talks about day after day is the flood and the rain.” Like dozens of producers in southwestern Manitoba, Barclay failed to seed a crop last spring because his fields were inundated with water. A variety of factors combined to make 2011 an extremely wet spring for farmers: a wetter than usual 2010, above average snowfall over the winter, a wet, cool spring and a massive amount of water flowing into Manitoba from Saskatchewan and North Dakota.
The 2,400 unseeded acres on Barclay’s farm contributed to an ignominious record: Manitoba producers were unable to seed 2.9 million acres of cropland in the spring of 2011, nearly double the old record of 1.5 million acres. The results were often poor to mediocre for producers who were able to seed a crop into the soggy conditions. Canola crops around Winnipeg were particularly dreadful. Farmers near Starbuck, Man., reported yields of three to six bushels per acre because plants were unable to develop roots in the wet spring and couldn’t tap into water deeper in the soil when little to no rain fell around Winnipeg in July and August. On the positive side, the dry weather persisted into the fall, drying up most of the province’s soaked and unseeded acres. Soil moisture conditions in southwestern Manitoba are likely better than they were in 2010, when many fields were saturated going into freeze up, said Elmer Kaskiw, a Manitoba Agriculture crop production
adviser in Shoal Lake. As well, the dry weather gave producers an opportunity to cultivate land that was rutted or damaged during the spring’s extremely soft conditions. It was also a nasty year for cattle producers around Lake Manitoba. Water diverted into the lake this spring and summer from the swollen Assiniboine River caused water levels to exceed 817 feet above sea level, nearly five feet higher than the maximum regulated level for Lake Manitoba. High water pushed the lake’s shoreline outward, forcing dozens of producers around the lake to move livestock inland or relocate animals to other pastures in Western Canada. The province dug a $100 million drainage channel, which is designed to drain excess water from Lake Manitoba and Lake St. Martin into Lake Winnipeg. Nonetheless, Lake Manitoba water levels were still high going into winter and many cattle producers around the lake are coping with frozen ponds on feed yards, pasture and hay land. access=subscriber section=news,none,none
Dry, warm fall welcome relief for Alberta BY BARB GLEN LETHBRIDGE BUREAU
The 2011 growing season got off to a slow start in Alberta, but a long fall broughtgoodtoexcellentyieldsandcrop quality across much of the province. Dry conditions in the Peace River region and wet, cool conditions in central and southern areas caused farmers early concern, but few acres were left unseeded in the final tally, said Alberta Agriculture crop specialist Neil Whatley. He said chemical companies likely had a good year because moisture conditions favoured the development of disease, such as sclerotinia and blackleg in canola, ergot and stripe rust in wheat and ascochyta blight in pulse crops, he said. However, crop quantity and quality prevailed if growers were able to apply fungicides in a timely fashion. Agriculture minister Evan Berger deemed it a successful crop year. “Through the first half of 2011, Alberta had the highest farm cash receipts in Canada, totalling $5.2 billion,” he said in December. Premier Alison Redford put agricultural exports at $6.7 billion for 2010, adding that the industr y employs about 70,000 people. Whatley said crop disease and insect specialists are still tallying the tolls taken on crops this year. Results are expected in early January. A long, open fall proved beneficial for harvest. Worries about an early frost did not materialize. Excessive moisture early in the season caused numerous problems for farmers and rural municipalities when fields and roads were inundated with surface water that was slow to drain. Brian Brewin, reeve for the Municipal District of Taber in south-central Alberta, said more than 200 roads were flooded in the MD this spring, forcing it to put infrastructure upgrading plans on hold to fix the damage. “We spent the entire year repairing back to what we had,” he said. “Our goal was to get as many roads open as we could for harvest. For the most part, we did it.” Similar work was needed in most rural municipalities across the south. Brewin said farmers’ efforts to drain land so that they could seed taxed municipal ditches that weren’t designed for heavy water drainage. Many irrigation ditches were flooded, having been designed to carry water from reservoirs to fields rather than manage excess water drainage. “It put everybody against everybody, that was the sad part this spring,” he said. “It had municipalities against municipalities, it had Alberta Transportation draining into farmers’ fields, one farmer draining into another farmer’s field and really putting people at odds against each other.” Alberta Environment reported that a large area around Grande Prairie and a pocket around Lethbridge had much above normal precipitation between May 1 and Aug. 31 with more than 130 millimetres. A swath extending from Peace River through Drayton Valley, Red Deer, Sundre and High River also had above average precipitation in excess of 110 mm in the same period. access=subscriber section=news,none,none