WINNIPEG – Dean Roberts, who farms north of Kindersley, Sask., is now cautiously optimistic about his 2025 crop.
Prior to June 20, some crops on his farm were running out of water and looked sickly. But after 30-60 mm of rain fell on much of west-central Saskatchewan on the weekend, Roberts and hundreds of other farmers in the region are feeling hopeful.
“Very much a sense of relief. Drought is a hard thing to stomach. To watch that crop burn up and there’s nothing you can do about it,” said Roberts, who farms near Coleville, Sask.
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“This buys us a couple of weeks and with a little luck with some thundershowers (in July), we might be all right now.”
From the beginning of May to the middle of June, the Environment Canada weather station in Kindersley recorded only 15 mm of precipitation. Some producers did receive more, thanks to a passing thunderstorm, but millions of acres of cropland in west-central Saskatchewan needed a large dose of moisture.
The June 20-22 rain will ensure that most producers harvest a crop in 2025.
“We will combine something now…. Two weeks ago, I was questioning what we were going to combine,” Roberts said.
“We had good (crop) establishment… but we really had no rain through seeding, after seeding. The crop had kind of… stalled out. If this rain wouldn’t have happened, the outlook wouldn’t be very good right now.”
North of Kindersley, in the North Battleford area, weekend storms delivered about 50 mm of rain or more, depending on location.
The moisture is extremely helpful but arrived a bit late for some crops – like earlier-seeded wheat.
“We were a couple of weeks ahead of schedule (for crop development). Mostly due to heat stress and drought,” said Quinton Cubbon, a crops extension specialist for Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Agriculture in North Battleford.
“The lower leaves on some (cereal) plants, you could see the drought symptoms. They were turning brown. Some of the wheat (was) already heading out.”
Nonetheless, the moisture was desperately needed and will make a massive difference for crops in the region.
Less rain in the Northeast
While places like Kindersley, Saskatoon and North Battleford recorded 30 – 50 mm of rain over the June 21 weekend, other parts of the province were less fortunate.
Nipawin only received 7 mm, says Environment Canada and about five mm fell on Prince Albert.
Ashley Kaminski, the crops extension specialist for Saskatchewan Agriculture in Humboldt, said her area got a bit more rain.
“It kind of depends on where you are. On my acreage, we were just over a half an inch (12.5 mm), but other areas got closer to an inch (25 mm).”
Back in west-Central Saskatchewan, about 60 mm of rain fell on Stuart Lawrence’s farm near Rosetown.
His crops looked decent prior to the rain, as a thunderstorm earlier in June had provided a shot of moisture.
However, Lawrence doesn’t want to get overly optimistic about the 2025 crop because last summer is still fresh in his mind.
A brutally hot and dry July, across much of the Prairies, turned a promising growing season into a year with disappointing yields.
“The second week of July, we started getting 30 degrees, every day,” Lawrence said.
This July could be better, but it’s too early to count bushels.
“I’m reasonably optimistic. (But) I don’t know if 2.5 inches makes this a bumper crop,” he said.
“About the only guarantee we’ve got, is that this rain will make grain prices go lower. We’re going to get a little Portage & Main syndrome… we’re going to have people think that we’ve got a (big) crop coming.”
