In a year when every nickel counts, Manitoba farmers got off to an optimistic start this spring when they were able to seed early.
But for many farmers, Mother Nature has rained and rained and rained on that parade.
In some of the flattest parts of the province, and in the lower spots in farmers’ fields, rain has pounded crops down, filled up ditches, rotted alfalfa in the swath and spurred on diseases and insects.
“We needed the whole crop just to pay our bills,” said Bob Anderson, a seed grower from Dugald, Man., explaining the tense mood among farmers in his area.
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Anderson lost track of the rain after 300 millimetres. It’s far too much for the flat, black land he farms east of Winnipeg.
“The oilseeds have taken a tremendous pounding.”
On July 14, Anderson said wheat and oat crops still looked lush. But he expected white, dead spots to start appearing in cereals this week.
The water has saturated soils, keeping oxygen from plant roots. Once roots are starved, the rest of the cereal plant slowly dries and dies.
“We’ve certainly taken the edge off any yield potential we might have had,” said Anderson. His region has a drain running every 1.6 kilometres. But the extra moisture is revealing the system’s failings, he said.
Provincial rules don’t allow the local conservation district to raise enough money through taxes to upgrade and maintain the drains. The rules might be adequate for some regions with fewer drains, he said, but they don’t work east of Winnipeg.
Farther south and east, near La Broquerie, Man., where ditches are overflowing onto farmers’ fields, Ray Pelletier criticized the patchwork system of drainage in the province.
The government needs an organized plan and a uniform system among municipalities, said Pelletier. Instead, it seems to be using crop insurance to address the aftermath of drainage problems.
“The producers are left knee-deep in water,” said Pelletier, a dairy farmer.
When a creek running along his pasture, too small to have a name, turned into a raging river, he had to move his dry cows and bred heifers to higher ground and put up fencing.
Pelletier is lucky. He was able to get a first cut of hay before most of the deluge of 380 to 450 mm of rain fell on the area.
Last week, he helped a neighbor try to make silage from his first cut, just to clean off the field to make way for a better second cut.
“But the issue right now is you cannot drive on the land,” said Pelletier. They got through only 40 acres of the 100-acre field.
Hay left standing or in the swath will be very poor quality. They will have to buy grain or protein meal to supplement their cows’ diets.
“It’s going to drive the cost of production up.”
The province’s farm lobby wants to meet with key provincial cabinet ministers to discuss drainage.
Don Dewar, president of Keystone Agricultural Producers, said in a release that good drainage policies are more cost-effective than compensating farmers for damages.
Neither the Agricultural Income Disaster Assistance program nor crop insurance is structured to help livestock producers who are short of feed.
Sheep producer John Hamerton normally takes his first cut of hay the last week of June, but so far hasn’t cut any hay during this “summer from hell.” His sheep are in a well-drained pasture near Anola, Man., but they are suffering from the bumper crop of mosquitoes.
“I have never seen it quite as wet,” said Hamerton.
