About a quarter of Manitoba’s cultivated acres are without a crop this year because of excess moisture and many farmers are close to despair.
“When I look around here all I see is water,” said Larry Reske, who farms near Beausejour in eastern Manitoba. Reske seeded half of the 1,630 acres that he would normally plant. The crop he did manage to seed is struggling in the soggy soil and will probably not yield much.
“My biggest thought is about preparing the land for next year. If we’re going to go into the fall wet and saturated, then I’m very concerned about what’s going to happen next year. We cannot dry out here. It’s not happening.”
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Don Dixon, director of Manitoba Agriculture’s crops branch, said 1.5 million acres were left unseeded this spring because fields were too wet. As well, the government is estimating that one million acres of crop were drowned or flooded by heavy rain, which means that out of 9.5 million acres of cultivated land in Manitoba, only seven million acres will yield a crop this year.
Saskatchewan Crop Insurance has received 2,800 unseeded acreage claims from across the province for this year, compared with 4,000 mainly in the southeast in 2004.
In Alberta, Agricultural Financial Services Corp. had about 400 claims for unseeded acres, representing 100,000 acres. They estimate 200,000 acres, both insured and uninsured, remain unseeded in the province, mainly around Edmonton and areas to the north, eastern areas like Provost and Lloydminster and the Peace River.
In Manitoba, Keystone Agricultural Producers, continues to lobby government for a variety of relief measures for affected producers:
- The removal of the five percent deductible on unseeded acre claims.
- An increase in the level of payment producers can receive through the excess moisture insurance program. Qualifying producers receive $50 per acre, but KAP estimates that is $16 per acre short of what is needed.
- A program supported by both levels of government to cover lost input costs.
“There are significant acres in the province that were drowned out and flooded out that were seeded,” said KAP president David Rolfe.
“Producers have lost the seed, fertilizer and chemical and obviously the cash used to put the crop in the ground, the fuel, et cetera.”
On acres seeded to wheat, the value of lost inputs would have averaged $78 per acre, Rolfe said.
KAP also called for a land maintenance program that would include not only support for weed control but also money to plant a cover crop on fields that could not be seeded or were drowned. That would help prevent wind and water erosion and also help draw excess moisture out of the soil, Rolfe said. The cost of the land maintenance program would be $36.50 per acre.
Crop producers are not the only ones affected by excess moisture this year. Rolfe said the damage to hay land and pastures also is becoming more apparent, creating the prospect of feed shortages in some areas of the province.
“There’s a terrific amount of pasture that’s not in very good condition and a lot of forage acres, whether it’s native hay or tame hay, that producers are having extreme difficulty getting off. We’re starting to see a far bigger picture emerge. It’s not just crop damage but livestock difficulties, too.”
Farmers filed 4,400 claims on 1.3 million unseeded acres as of July 14, according to Herb Sulkers, director of field operations for Manitoba Crop Insurance. The claims have come from all parts of the province, but particularly the eastern and Interlake regions.
The crop insurance agency estimated excess moisture insurance payments this year will exceed $50 million.
Last year, 600,000 acres were left unseeded in Manitoba because of excess moisture. A total of $24.7 million was paid out on 3,000 related insurance claims.
