ARBORG, Man. – Most farmers like having the chance to show off a good crop.
But some farmers in the Interlake area of Manitoba, between Lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba, have had only small, ragged, dying crops to show.
“We’ve been praying for rain every day, but no,” said Arborg farmer Peter Jenzen, as a group of organic farmers and organic marketers kicked up the dust on a parched quarter section of land that is vainly trying to produce a hemp crop.
“Everything has been against us.”
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While most farmers across the Prairies have been receiving adequate rainfall this year, and some are producing their first good crop for three years, Interlake area farmers have seen almost no rain this year. Some farmers in parts of west-central Saskatchewan have been suffering the same cruel weather, which is crippling their crops while giving most farmers adequate moisture.
“There are a lot of people around here who don’t have a crop,” said Mike Kirk, a special crops marketer, as he drove through the Eston, Sask., area.
“Things here don’t look good.”
Fisher Branch, Man., agricultural representative Dan Roche said many farmers in his area have given up on their crops.
“It’s too late for a lot of them,” he said, picking up a handful of soil that ran from his hand like water and left no trace
behind.
Farmers are praying for rain so their pastures can recover.
In the field of alfalfa that Roche was standing in, lygus bugs had been a problem this summer.
Jenzen’s farm had been ravaged by cutworms.
“That field over there, it was like it was sterilized,” said Jenzen.
As an organic farmer he couldn’t spray to control the bugs, so he had to reseed.
A neighbour who did spray also had to reseed after the pesticide killed most of the bugs, but left just enough to destroy the crop, he said.
Elsewhere, grasshoppers are devouring the drought-striken crops, which don’t have a chance to outgrow their damage.
“This year because there’s so little, they’ll eat it all,” Roche said.
One crop he checked had about 1,000 grasshoppers per sq. foot.
“The land was black with them,” Roche said.
