BEAUSEJOUR, Man. – In this area, a lot of canola is still flowering and cereal and corn crops are green.
The lush crops stand as if they are in rice paddies, with pools of water lying on many fields, reflecting the rare sunlight.
It’s a disaster for Red River Valley farmers.
The crops aren’t ruined yet, but canola that is still flowering will have little chance to pod, mature and cure.
The situation is worse for corn crops, which not only have longer times to maturity than canola, but also produce massive amounts of plant matter that has to be handled before winter.
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With the valley’s thick clay soils acting like bathtubs for the continuing heavy rains, few farmers have been able to get into the fields. They’re going to need to get into their corn fields soon, whether to attempt harvest or simply chop up and work in the crop.
“We need a September miracle and an October miracle,” said Homewood, Man., farmer Bud McKnight, president of the Manitoba Corn Growers Association.
“If we’re going to harvest anything for grain, we need another three weeks to a month of sun and heat.”
With first frost dates for many areas coming this week, that hoped-for spell of warm and sunny weather is unlikely, but McKnight hopes farmers will at least be able to get out into the fields before winter to do damage control.
“If you leave something in your field that’s 10 feet high, and we’re already topped up with moisture, and you get four feet of snow and a late spring, you’ll get the same problem we got this year,” said McKnight, who grows more than 1,000 acres of corn each year.
Corn acreage has steadily increased in Manitoba in the past two decades, as shorter-season varieties have been developed.
Most grain corn production occurs in the warm and longer-season Red River Valley, but silage corn crops are grown across western Manitoba.
This year’s crop was seeded late in many areas, then crippled by low temperatures and overcast conditions. Corn needs heat and direct sunlight to mature.
McKnight said the tragedy of this year’s crop is that it looks bountiful, but there’s no way for most growers to get it to maturity and gather it.
He doesn’t think corn producers will find much of a market for corn silage, because most producers grow enough for their own needs. Much will have to be shredded and disked in.
Crop insurance adjusters often require farmers to wait until late in the season before they give the go-ahead to turn a crop under, but McKnight said the corn growers association is pressing Manitoba Crop Insurance to allow growers to trash their crops as soon as the fields can support machinery.
“If you wait until freeze-up to determine (whether a crop can be written off) it’s not going to get worked in,” said McKnight.
“They’re going to have to come up with new procedures.”
Even though this is a terrible year for corn growers, McKnight doesn’t think farmers will back away from the crop.
It is more resistant to fus-arium than barley or wheat, and problems like this year’s don’t happen often.
“We’ve grown corn for more than 30 years and only in one year have we not got a crop,” said McKnight.
“There is no crop that can produce more pounds of meat or more pounds of milk off an acre of land, so whether we’re talking silage or grain, it’s the king of feed grains.”
