REGINA (Staff) – The deadly breath of frost that recently touched northwest Saskatchewan is only the latest curse to fall upon area producers.
A plague of drought has stricken crops from the Alberta border to east of North Battleford and from Meadow Lake to south of the North Saskatchewan River.
“It’s just terrible all the way around,” said North Battleford farmer and Saskatchewan Wheat Pool employee Trina Woodrow.
“Everybody’s just putting their hands in the air. They don’t know what to do.”
Producers are pondering whether to plow a crop under or wait hopefully for rain; whether to spray stunted crops or abandon them as hopeless; what to do with cattle whose pastures are barren with poor prospects for hay.
Read Also
Farming Smarter receives financial boost from Alberta government for potato research
Farming Smarter near Lethbridge got a boost to its research equipment, thanks to the Alberta government’s increase in funding for research associations.
Many producers who seeded into dusty conditions in spring re-seeded when little emergence occurred. Re-seeded land isn’t faring much better, Woodrow said.
Good rain would help
Lashburn elevator manager Jerome Halter said little can be done for crops that have headed out at six to eight inches high, but a good rain this week could save crops that haven’t matured.
The four degrees of frost felt between Marshall and Maidstone have blackened and ruined gardens, but the toll on canola is not yet clear.
“Anything that was flowering will be nothing. It’ll be straw with nothing in it,” Halter predicted.
