It’s probably become part of their regular routine, but prairie farmers have been advised to start preparing drought strategies for 2004.
“Farmers will have to be looking at drought mitigation strategies and crops that will perform under dry conditions,” says Bruce Burnett, director of weather and crop surveillance for the Canadian Wheat Board.
“We’re going to have to manage soil moisture very carefully because it is a very critical situation out there.”
Red flags about soil moisture were first raised in November, when federal forecasters said the situation resembled 2001-02. The past two months haven’t brought much improvement, with all of Alberta and most of Saskatchewan reporting less than 50 percent of normal precipitation from Dec. 1 to Jan. 12.
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Speaking to reporters during Crop Production Week in Saskatoon, Burnett was pressed to predict whether prairie farmers are going to experience another drought in 2004. He refused to go that far, saying he doesn’t put much stock in long-range forecasts.
But he did say the success of this year’s crop will be a day-to-day proposition.
“We have such low soil moisture levels that the timing of rain throughout the growing season is going to be very important,” he said. “Even some late season snowfall will help quite a bit.”
Burnett presented a series of soil moisture maps that showed virtually all the grain-growing region painted shades of yellow, orange and red, all indicating soil moisture reserves below 50 percent of normal.
The fall 2001 soil moisture maps showed levels generally below 25 percent of normal; this year it’s more like 25-40 percent of normal.
“But the area is just as big and it’s still a very significant soil moisture deficit,” said Burnett.
A few areas are worse off than two years ago, including southeastern Saskatchewan and southwestern Manitoba, west-central Saskatchewan and the Peace River area.
Burnett said a dry spring could see spring wheat acreage increase by roughly four percent, with durum up five percent and barley three percent. Canola and special crops area would decline.
Wetter conditions could see spring wheat decline by four percent and barley by as much as 10 percent, while canola could jump by 10-15 percent. Durum and special crops would also increase.
