This year was the best year ever for farmers around Portage la Prairie, Man.
It was also the worst.
Fortune has been capricious in the region, leaving some producers stuck with their income tied up in cattle they can’t sell while others smile about harvesting high profits from a beautiful, bin-busting crop.
Local farmer Ed Rempel had difficulty summing up how farmers in his district were doing when he addressed a local Keystone Agricultural Producers meeting on Nov. 12.
“I can’t believe how much we lost,” he said about his own cattle operation this year.
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The yield estimates for wheat and soybeans were neutral to bullish, but these were largely a sideshow when compared with corn.
But straight grain farmers are experiencing good times because most harvested big, high-quality crops and are now getting good prices.
“This is an exciting time for agriculture in District 6,” Rempel said. “I think every (grain farmer) is going to make money.”
KAP is holding a series of meetings around rural Manitoba this fall to update local producers and hear their concerns.
Unlike what they’ve heard from farmers in parts of southwestern Manitoba, farmers in the Portage area are not suffering from a combination of drought and the bovine spongiform encephalopathy crisis, which has left thousands of Manitoba farmers with cattle they can’t move and not enough hay or grain to keep the animals through the winter.
Grain farmers in parts of southwestern Manitoba may not be directly hit by BSE, but they have to watch good grain prices dance before their eyes, knowing they have only half a crop to sell this winter.
In central Manitoba, however, cattle producers are able to hang onto their cattle because they have lots of hay and feed. And there’s little problem finding local feed grain because farmers harvested an abundance.
But with no guarantee they’ll be able to cash out their cattle in a few months, local cattle producers don’t know whether being able to feed them over the winter is a good thing.
“The future is totally unstable,” said Portage la Prairie feedlot operator Chris McCallister.
“I have no idea what is going to happen. If the border doesn’t open by springtime we’re going to be in big trouble. If it doesn’t open by springtime we’ll probably be out of the cattle business.”
There’s little of this worry at Brad Rasmussen’s Starbuck area grain farm.
“We had the best crop we ever had,” he said.
Yields were large and quality was good. The only element that is not peaking is prices, which are high but not the highest ever. However, he’s not too worried about that.
“A great crop helps OK prices a lot.”
Mixed farmer Gary Smith lives in the world between Rasmussen’s good fortune and McCallister’s bad luck.
He harvested great crops, which are fetching good prices, but he has a full feedlot of spring calves that he plans to feed over the winter.
“For once the cattle ain’t pulling up the grain,” he said. “It’s the grain pulling up the cattle.”
