REGINA – The durum crop looked too good to be true – and it was.
Hundreds of southwestern Sask-
atchewan durum producers saw a beautiful, four-foot tall durum crop cut down by a massive hail storm last week.
“I think we had a 50 (bushel) plus crop and it just smashed it,” said Cabri farmer Wayne Shaw. “I don’t think I have enough left to fill half of a small bin.”
Shaw lost virtually all of his 650 acres of durum, and he isn’t alone.
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Local crop insurance agent Gary Hadden said the hail hit an area from just south of Hazlet to north of Cabri. Most crops in its path, 40 kilometres long by 10 km wide, are destroyed.
The golf ball-sized hail hammered the crops so severely that “you wonder where it all went to, when you figure there was a four-foot crop blowing there two days ago. It was pounded into the ground. It seems to disappear,” said Hadden.
With durum prices higher than expected and the outlook good, uninsured producers face heavy losses. But Hadden said most local growers are well-insured because of what happened last year.
Shaun Filson, who works in the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool elevator in Cabri, said a hail storm that hit almost the exact same area last year caused heavy losses.
He said the pool thinks its producers alone lost about 300,000 bushels.
“It’s two years in a row now and some guys are a little bit disgusted, especially with the prices looking so good,” said Filson.
Hadden said most producers will receive some insurance, but “it’s still a big loss. You never insure enough to cover your crop.”
Shaw thinks he is better insured than most. When he saw how good his crop looked and thought about the high prices he’d likely get for it, he added extra insurance.
He won’t lose much money unless durum passes $6 per bushel, which could happen.
But collecting insurance “is still not the same as having it in the bin.
“That’s what we’re here for, to grow grain. Not to get it pounded into the ground. That crop would have been a nice one to put in the bin,” said Shaw.
