Prospects for an excellent wild rice harvest in northern Saskatchewan have been trashed by weeks of wet, windy weather.
Manitoba rice pickers are faring better, but also have been confounded by wind, cloud and rain.
“It’s been such a weird year, it’s impossible to predict the outcome,” said Wally Parada, who owns a wild rice packaging company in La Ronge, Sask.
He guessed that his packaging plant will receive only about 90,000 pounds of wild rice this year, far down from 300,000 last year.
Harsh winds through most of September have caused plants to shed most of the crop into the water, Parada said. But other plants are not yet mature and still need sun and warmth.
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In both Saskatchewan and Manitoba, industry sources say crop maturity varies from lake to lake.
Frost is only a few days away, and then the harvest will be effectively over, Parada said.
Harry Arseniuk, a Whiteshell, Man. packager, said pickers there have only had about six days to gather rice. What they’re getting is good, he said, but much is being left behind.
Last year was a disaster for many Manitoba pickers, Arseniuk said, and this year looked little better until pickers actually got out to the plants.
“It’s better than I expected,” he said.
Both Parada and Arseniuk said a few days of warm, dry, windless weather could make this year’s harvest much better.
“We’ve got people just waiting for the weather to change,” said Parada.
Parada said one good result could come from the generally poor harvest this year: higher prices.
Wild rice has been selling for between 70 and 75 cents per pound for the last 10 years, with no inflationary increases.
“It’s kind of hard on the producer to make a buck and keep going,” Parada said.
Arseniuk agreed.
“No one’s making much money at it now.”
