Early frost a risk | Although late seeded crops have done well in the past, will this year be an exception?
Myron Krahn, a farmer from Carman, Man., who is also president of the Manitoba Corn Growers Association, says it’s a popular question across Manitoba these days:
“Do we have open falls all the time now?” he said.
“We all talk about that. It’s been the trend recently.”
It’s a hot topic because Manitoba farmers have once again been forced to seed a few fields at the end of May and the beginning of June.
Historically it’s been a perilous situation, but for many years bad frosts have come later in the season than expected, allowing late crops to survive and do OK.
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Late springs haven’t led to disaster.
For example, many fields were seeded extremely late last year, but a record crop was still produced.
It’s a collection of weird weather factors that has farmers scratching their heads about what’s normal and when they should start fearing frost.
Keystone Agricultural Producers president Doug Chorney said most farmers he knows don’t put much stock in the open falls that have kept many a crop from being ruined.
“We’ve been lucky since 2004, and that’s let us get away with a lot of things we wouldn’t normally get away with,” said Chorney, who has seeded little on his farm northeast of Winnipeg.
“If we get a more average frost date, we’ll have a lot of problems.”
Many areas have historical first frost dates of around Sept. 20 and can’t harvest past Oct. 31, Krahn said, and that creates a window in which most farmers still believe.
Krahn said he thinks many farmers who haven’t planted long season crops such as corn by June 1 will switch to something else. Frost might not have hurt last year’s record crop, but having to pay high gas bills to stop the wet, late harvest from spoiling turned a lot of farmers off.
“This year, guys will be a lot quicker to pull the pin,” said Krahn.
“The yield (last year) was really, really good, but the drawback was all the drying costs.”
He said most of the main corn areas in Manitoba have been planted, but “some guys have zero in” north of the Trans-Canada Highway and in southwestern Manitoba.
Krahn said farmers are likely to switch into shorter season crops following a wet weekend and forecasts for more rain during the final days of May. Even if they aren’t as scared of early frosts as in the past, they don’t want to gamble on combining in November and having to pay big drying bills.
“This last rain might have put the nail in the coffin for some of the guys if they don’t have it in yet,” said Krahn.
