CAMROSE – The day Crowfoot Conservative incumbent Kevin Sorenson opened his campaign headquarters in mid-September, his wife Darlene was nowhere to be seen despite her key campaign role.
She was driving a combine as area farmers took advantage of good weather to try to make progress on a late harvest. 
In Macleod riding south of Calgary, Conservative Ted Menzies has been pounding in more election signs himself this year than in the previous two elections.
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“A lot of my volunteers are farmers and they have other things to do so far this campaign,” he said.
In the Vegreville-Wainwright riding east of Edmonton, Conservative Leon Benoit notes that it is tough to find voters in towns during the days because “they are the harvest staff.”
In the southwestern Saskatchewan riding of Cypress Hills-Grasslands, Liberal candidate Duane Filson spent almost all the first two weeks of the campaign trying to get the crop off his 2,500 acre farm near Woodrow, Sask.
“I’m still combining,” he said in a Sept. 18 e-mail. “I guess there is worse election timing for a farmer, but I’m not sure when that is.”
The story is similar for Liberal candidate Rod Flaman in the riding of Regina-Qu’Appelle. Two weeks into the campaign Flaman said he had yet to even put up a sign because he still had 1,000 acres to harvest.
The story was the same across much of the rural Prairies during the first two weeks of the campaign for the Oct. 14 election.
An election call during harvest, and particularly in many areas where a late harvest was the norm, meant many farmers have had little chance to take part in the campaign, to volunteer or even to get to political meetings to hear the candidates debate.
“It is a problem, no doubt about it,” Wild Rose Agricultural Producers president Humphrey Banack said on his Camrose area farm Sept. 16 as combines rolled through his fields. “We’re about halfway through and there isn’t much time for anything else. Not a lot of farmers are going to have a lot of time to get involved or even pay attention to the issues and that’s too bad because there are a lot of issues that affect farmers this time.”
He said one of the key reasons farmers should make an effort to get to meetings is to make sure agricultural issues are raised.
“I think one of the great issues for us is that we are a major industry that often gets overlooked because of our limited voting power,” said Banack. “We have to keep raising the issues that matter to us to make sure the candidates and their leaders understand that we are here, that we have issues and that we matter.”
However, some candidates say there is no chance farmers will let the campaign go by without having their issues aired, even if they are busy.
“Our agricultural producers are very well informed and the debate among them is intense,” said Westlock-St. Paul Conservative incumbent candidate Brian Storseth about his central to northern Alberta riding.
“Farm politics can be more brutal and intense than regular politics.”
Sorenson concurs that farmers will try to get involved whatever the circumstance.
“I have farmers calling my campaign office from their combines to ask their questions and making their points,” he said. “We’re hearing from them.”
Candidates and their workers also are reminding farmers that election laws now allow a vote to be cast throughout the campaign in advance polls.
“If there’s a rainy day when they can’t work in the field, they can vote,” said Benoit. “A heavy dew on voting day wouldn’t hurt either.”
