STARBUCK, Man. – Scott Livingston knows what to expect when he sits down to crunch the numbers from his farm this year.
“It will be a break-even year at best,” he said, during a pause from swathing canola east of Starbuck.
Livingston’s hopes of a bountiful canola crop were dashed by heavy rains that fell throughout much of June and July.
Crops in low-lying areas of his fields were drowned. In the canola field he was swathing Aug. 9, at least a third of the crop was lost.
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“And that’s probably being conservative,” he said.
Livingston is one of many farmers in central and eastern regions of Manitoba whose revenues were eroded by excess rains.
During the past three months, Livingston’s fields were deluged with 460 millimetres of rain. The land was so wet that part of his canola crop had to be sprayed by plane earlier this summer.
It’s a story familiar to Allan Steinke of the Manitoba Crop Insurance Corporation.
His agency has received 800 claims from farmers whose yields have suffered under soggy soils.
The claims are what Steinke calls partial claims. They stem from fields that were not entirely wiped out, but had pockets of damage that at times covered more than 30 percent of a crop.
Steinke expects more claims will pour into crop insurance offices as the harvest advances and as farmers discover the extent of damage.
Last year, farmers in parts of western Manitoba struggled to plant crops because of excess moisture.
This year, the moisture arrived later and shifted eastward.
“The western half of the province got hurt last year,” Steinke said, “and now we’ve got the eastern half of the province really getting hurt this year.
“It’s sure not a normal phenomenon and I hope it doesn’t continue this way.”
Oilseed and specialty crops such as field beans suffered most during the prolonged period of rains this summer.
Cereal crops were better off despite waterlogged patches in many fields and lodging in wheat fields near Starbuck last week.
“Canola seems to be one of the crops that has suffered the most,” said John McGregor, a provincial agricultural representative based at Steinbach.
“Although we had some recovery, it’s not very much compared to the other crops.”
Close to 420 mm of rain fell in areas around Steinbach in June and July.
There was a week in June and a week in July that each had at least 100 mm of rainfall.
“Once we kicked into the first full week of June, it didn’t stop,” McGregor said.
Because of moist, humid weather last month, fusarium head blight is a concern to cereal growers.
