This is a disaster.
We travelled from far west of Red Deer Alberta, east through Red Deer, jogged north to Stettler( went right by Hamloc I think), Castor, Consort, Biggar, Saskatoon, then north and back towards North Battleford, West through Cutknife, Wainwright, Camrose, south on 21, then west to Ponoka.
From east of hwy 21 all the way to well past North Battleford, I don't think I would be exaggerating to say there are more crops of all types in the single digit yields than above that, regardless of the weather from here on out. And 0 is a single digit. There really wasn't an area that wasn't depressingly bad in all that distance. I hope for those farmers sake that I am wrong since most of my experience is with drowned out crops, not dried out and burnt crops.
A large area around Cutknife had some good crops, at least compared to everything else we had seen, patches of better crop from there west. Then again around Camrose and south it improved again, and started seeing more signs of drown out than dried out, but still very variable. Could see what I assume to be soil differences in every field by crop height and color.
Some crops that looked decent from a distance, aren't. Talked to a farmer near Halkirk, he showed me that almost all the wheat heads were empty, in a green crop that looked like it had potential. Said all the barley is already a write off with no grain, being baled for straw already.
Even closer to Red Deer where things look good, there are hills turning white, canola done flowering much too soon, short thin crops compared to usual.
If that route of approx 1400 km, is at all representative of the rest of the prairies, then the posters suggesting we will raise half of a normal crop are probably high. As I understand, there are much worse areas than what we saw.
From what I've heard, there is a very good area here in west Central AB, another around Calgary, but doesn't extend very far south or east, A strip around Regina, plus the areas I mentioned above.
Is that it? And even those areas will still have been ( and continue to be) flowering in the heat with little or no subsoil for the rest of the summer.
No one is crying wolf this year.
What a hopeless situation for the livestock producers.
We travelled from far west of Red Deer Alberta, east through Red Deer, jogged north to Stettler( went right by Hamloc I think), Castor, Consort, Biggar, Saskatoon, then north and back towards North Battleford, West through Cutknife, Wainwright, Camrose, south on 21, then west to Ponoka.
From east of hwy 21 all the way to well past North Battleford, I don't think I would be exaggerating to say there are more crops of all types in the single digit yields than above that, regardless of the weather from here on out. And 0 is a single digit. There really wasn't an area that wasn't depressingly bad in all that distance. I hope for those farmers sake that I am wrong since most of my experience is with drowned out crops, not dried out and burnt crops.
A large area around Cutknife had some good crops, at least compared to everything else we had seen, patches of better crop from there west. Then again around Camrose and south it improved again, and started seeing more signs of drown out than dried out, but still very variable. Could see what I assume to be soil differences in every field by crop height and color.
Some crops that looked decent from a distance, aren't. Talked to a farmer near Halkirk, he showed me that almost all the wheat heads were empty, in a green crop that looked like it had potential. Said all the barley is already a write off with no grain, being baled for straw already.
Even closer to Red Deer where things look good, there are hills turning white, canola done flowering much too soon, short thin crops compared to usual.
If that route of approx 1400 km, is at all representative of the rest of the prairies, then the posters suggesting we will raise half of a normal crop are probably high. As I understand, there are much worse areas than what we saw.
From what I've heard, there is a very good area here in west Central AB, another around Calgary, but doesn't extend very far south or east, A strip around Regina, plus the areas I mentioned above.
Is that it? And even those areas will still have been ( and continue to be) flowering in the heat with little or no subsoil for the rest of the summer.
No one is crying wolf this year.
What a hopeless situation for the livestock producers.
Comment